Editing Wilfred Owen (section)

==Poetry==
{{See also|List of poems by Wilfred Owen}}
Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/wilfred_owen.shtml|title=BBC – Poetry Season – Poets – Wilfred Owen|website=Bbc.co.uk|access-date=23 March 2019}}</ref> known for his verse about the horrors of trench and gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic beginnings to a stay at [[Broxton, Cheshire|Broxton by the Hill]] when he was ten years old.<ref>Sitwell, O. op. cit. p. 93.</ref>

The poetry of [[William Butler Yeats]] was a significant influence for Owen, but Yeats did not reciprocate Owen's admiration, excluding him from ''The Oxford Book of Modern Verse'', a decision Yeats later defended, saying Owen was "all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar stick" and "unworthy of the poet's corner of a country newspaper". Yeats elaborated: "In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies ... If war is necessary in our time and place, it is best to forget its suffering as we do the discomfort of fever ..."<ref>{{cite book |title=Poets of World War I: Wilfred Owen & Isaac Rosenberg |year=2002 |page=9 |publisher=Infobase |isbn=9781438115801 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TwwPHLLg2xwC&q=yeats}}</ref>

The Romantic poets [[John Keats|Keats]] and [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]] influenced much of his early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, later had a profound effect on his poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems ("Dulce et Decorum est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth") show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of [[pararhyme]] with heavy reliance on [[assonance]] was innovative, he was not the only poet at the time to use these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Helen McPhail|author2=Philip Guest|title=Wilfred Owen|publisher=Leo Cooper|year=1998|page=18}}</ref>

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|quote =<poem>
'''[[Anthem for Doomed Youth]]'''

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.
</poem>
|source = 1920<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/anthem_for_doomed_youth.shtml |title=Poetry Season&nbsp;– Poems&nbsp;– Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen |publisher=BBC |access-date=2 April 2012}}</ref>
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His poetry itself underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced by [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] [[psychoanalysis]], aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style". Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis on [[Realism (arts)|realism]] and "writing from experience" was contrary to Owen's hitherto romantic-influenced style, as seen in his earlier sonnets. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his own romantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent and sympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase "the pity of war". In this way, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by his strong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and his editing was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet.

Owen's poems had the benefit of strong patronage, and it was a combination of Sassoon's influence, support from [[Edith Sitwell]], and the preparation of a new and fuller edition of the poems in 1931 by [[Edmund Blunden]] that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye.<ref name=sel /> Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface", he never saw his own work published apart from those poems he included in ''[[The Hydra]]'', the magazine he edited at Craiglockhart War Hospital, and "[[Miners (poem)|Miners]]", which was published in ''The Nation''.

There were many other influences on Owen's poetry, including his mother. His letters to her provide an insight into Owen's life at the front, and the development of his philosophy regarding the war. Graphic details of the horror Owen witnessed were never spared. Owen's experiences with religion also heavily influenced his poetry, notably in poems such as "Anthem for Doomed Youth", in which the ceremony of a funeral is re-enacted not in a church, but on the battlefield itself, and "[[At a Calvary near the Ancre]]", which comments on the [[Crucifixion]] of [[Christ]]. Owen's experiences in war led him further to challenge his religious beliefs, claiming in his poem "Exposure" that "love of God seems dying".

Only five of Owen's poems were published before his death, one in fragmentary form. His best known poems include "[[Anthem for Doomed Youth]]", "[[Futility (poem)|Futility]]", "[[Dulce Et Decorum Est]]", "[[The Parable of the Old Man and the Young|The Parable of the Old Men and the Young]]" and "[[Strange Meeting (poem)|Strange Meeting]]".
However, most of them were published posthumously: ''[[Poems (Wilfred Owen)|Poems]]'' (1920), ''The Poems of Wilfred Owen'' (1931), ''The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen'' (1963), ''The Complete Poems and Fragments'' (1983); fundamental in this last collection is the poem ''[[Soldier's Dream]]'', that deals with Owen's conception of war.

Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume work ''The Complete Poems and Fragments'' (1994) by [[Jon Stallworthy]]. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.

In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to the [[University of Oxford]]'s English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts, this also includes all of Owen's personal library and an almost complete set of ''The Hydra''&nbsp;– the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.

The [[Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center]] at the [[University of Texas at Austin]] holds a large collection of Owen's family correspondence.