hugh haughton
After the War, according to G. S. Fraser, ‘the public fairly rapidly lost a wide
interestin war poetry’.^55 In fact, it would be more than twenty years before antho-
logists took up the challenge laid down by these two American anthologies. Many
of Oscar Williams’s questions about war poetry return to haunt later anthologies
of Second World War verse, and whereas the canon of First World War poetry is
relatively stable, that of the Second remains much less clear-cut, as we shall see.
IV
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••In the 1960s war poetry returned to the agenda, with republication of the poems
of Douglas and Lewis, a return to war in poems and essays by contemporary poets
such as Geoffrey Hill and Ted Hughes,^56 and a new wave of anthologies of both
World Wars.
Brian Gardner led the way withUp the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–1918
(1964), followed by I. M. Parsons withMen Who March Away(1965), another
First World War anthology with a preface by the indefatigable Blunden.^57 Both
are organized in terms of roughly chronological categories from Declaration to
Armistice, with Parsons taking us from ‘Visions of Glory’ to ‘The Bitter Truth’, and
Gardner from ‘Prelude’ and ‘Happy is England Now’ through ‘Death’s Kingdom’
to ‘At Last, At Last!’ In setting up chronological and thematic headings, they
were following in the footsteps of the earliest anthologists, as well as establishing a
precedent for later ones. Neither included poems by women or poets writing in other
languages.^58 The Second World War poetic canon was being reshaped at the same
time along similar lines, with Ian Hamilton’sPoetry of War(1965), Brian Gardner’s
Terrible Rain(1966), and Charles Hamblett’sI Burn for England: An Anthology of the
Poetry of World War II(1966) coming out in quick succession.^59 Though the last was
organized alphabetically, Hamilton and Gardner grouped poems under headings,
with Hamilton taking us through ‘Simplify me When I am Dead’ and ‘War Poet’ to
‘History’s Thread’, and Gardner from ‘Yes, We are Going to Suffer’ through ‘The
Desert’, ‘Cruel Sea’, and ‘The Jungle’, on to ‘Victory’. Once again, none of these
(^55) G. S. Fraser, ‘War Poetry andOasis’, in Selwynet al.(eds.),Return to Oasis, p. xxxi.
(^56) Keith Douglas,Selected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes (London: Faber, 1964);idem,Collected Poems,
ed. John Waller, G. S. Fraser, and J. C. Hall (London: Faber, 1966); Alun Lewis,Selected Poetry and
Prose 57 , ed. Ian Hamilton (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966).
Brian Gardner (ed.),Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–18(London: Methuen, 1964);
I. M. Parsons (ed.),Men Who March Away(London: Chatto & Windus, 1965).
(^58) Gardner does include an extract from Edith Sitwell’s ‘The Shadow of Cain’.
(^59) Ian Hamilton (ed.),The Poetry of War 1939–45(London: Alan Ross, 1965); Brian Gardner (ed.),
The Terrible Rain: The War Poets 1939–45(London: Methuen, 1966); Charles Hamblett (ed.),IBurn
for England: An Anthology of Poetry from World War II(London: Leslie Frewin, 1966). The same
year, Ronald Blythe editedWriting in a War: Stories, Poems and Essays 1939–1945(Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1966).