International Poetry of the First World War - by Constance M Ruzich (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Ranging far beyond the traditional canon, this ground-breaking anthology casts a vivid new light on poetic responses to the First World War. Bringing together poems by soldiers and non-combatants, patriots and dissenters, and from all sides of the conflict across the world, International Poetry of the First World Warreveals the crucial public role that poetry played in shaping responses to and the legacies of the conflict.

Across over 150 poems, this anthology explores such topics as the following:
- Life at the Front
- Psychological trauma
- Noncombatants and the home front
- Rationalising the war
- Remembering the dead
- Peace and the aftermath of the war

With contextual notes throughout, the book includes poems written by authors from America, Australia, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, and South Africa.

Review Quotes

[Includes] some first-class verse unfamiliar to many readers ... well worth reading.
Times Literary Supplement

Here is a superb anthology and work of scholarship that, in an astonishing feat of literary archaeology, cuts through the smoke and noise of the First World War to present us with poems that have been hidden in history's unforgiving mud for far too long. The poems are illuminated and set in context and I hope that they will now take their place alongside the small number of First World War poems that everyone knows so well. Here is poetry's abundance in the face of horror.
Ian McMillan, Poet

Ruzich successfully broadens the scope of First World War poetry and has created an important volume of both literary and historic value.
The Great War Group

About the Author

Constance M. Ruzich is a Professor of English at Robert Morris University, USA. She runs the popular blog Behind Their Lines (https: //behindtheirlines.blogspot.com), dedicated to the discussion of the poetry of World War I