Homework 2.2
Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with 7 million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote, “I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.”
To mark the WWI centenary, The Poetry Foundation website has put together a sampling of poems written in English by both soldiers and civilians, chosen from their archive of over 250 poems from WWI. Go to the link https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70139/the-poetry-of-world-war-i. and link from there to a wide selection of poems. There you will find poems arranged by year and themes.
Your homework assignment, which you will write in your JOURNAL (Journalling 100, found in Lesson 2.1), is to select one of the poems that you like from the website; copy it into your journal and below it, write a personal analysis and appreciation of the poem (200-300 words).
Use the following questions to guide your thinking, BUT DON’T ANSWER THE QUESTIONS DIRECTLY. It is not a test! It is meant to be a reflection to be written in sentences and paragraphs.
- What does the poem have to do with you personally?
- How can you connect with it? Past? Present? Future?
- How much does the poem agree or disagree with your view of the world and what you consider to be right or wrong?
- What did you learn from the poem? How much of your own points-of-view were challenged by the poem?
- What can you praise about the poem? What problems do you find with the poem?