No doubt it will take me several months to get through all of them! Hopefully I will find some classic authors, from across the ages, that I may not have come across had I not bought this collection. I shall post a short review after reading each one. I couldn’t help it they looked so good that I went and bought them all. The Little Black Classic Collection by penguin looks like it contains lots of hidden gems.

I don’t feel the need to go out and buy an edition of his full work because in this there is thirty five of his poems, I don’t think I need anymore. The same theme runs through the poems in this edition, which helps cement my perception of this Poet’s style. I’m not at all familiar with this Poet’s work, and I feel that this is a strong introduction to him. Personally I think edition should have been named after this one, but that’s just my taste in poetry. They’re all great in their own way, and I like 1914 in particular. Indeed, the poem for which this edition is named is fantastic, but is not the only poem in here worthy of merit.

The men are slaughtered like animals by the noisy artillery, and the tears that are shed are not strong enough to mourn the true horrors of war. In the anthem the noise from artillery shells becomes the choir, men become cattle and the tears of the fallen become candles. The title immediately suggests that the young soldiers of both sides are fated to die they will die in the trenches and in the fields thus, the “anthem” is a mockery at the patriotic society that naively pushed these youngsters into uniform. His time in the trenches enlightened him to his fact, as his personal experience led him to the reality. Thus, the message of Anthem for Doomed Youth is abundantly clear: war is terrible. The result of his service was a radical shift in his poetry it became anti-war.

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen