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‘FOR ISAAC
ROSENBERG’:
GEOFFREY HILL,
MICHAEL
LONGLEY, CATHAL
O SEARCAIGH ́
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Isaac Rosenberg was killed at the Western Front, near Arras, France, on the
morning of April Fool’s Day, 1918, while on dawn patrol. His body was never
recovered. The Anglo-Jewish poet, painter, playwright, and First World War
soldier from the East End of London left behind a considerableoeuvrefor an
artist whose life was cut short at the age of 27. Yet we can still say today what
Rosenberg scholar and biographer Joseph Cohen said 45 years ago—namely,
that Rosenberg’s admirers are ‘practically unanimous in lamenting’ his ‘continued
lack of status among the modern poets’, and that ‘so little has been said about
Isaac Rosenberg that one hardly knows where to begin’.^1 Since the emergence
(^1) Joseph Cohen, unpublished notes, ‘Isaac Rosenberg: From Romantic to Classic’, held in an as
yet unprocessed folder in the Joseph Cohen archive, Rare Books and Special Collections Department,
Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.