How form impacts persona and message in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen
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| Photo by Elina Sazonova |
Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen — the names of these two poets evoke, instantaneously, thoughts of the artistic heart that was moulded in the steel storm of the First World War, and, in the case of Owen, outlasted its creator’s experience of it. Owen and Sassoon had a well-known friendship, with Owen very much seeing Sassoon as a mentor. Yet although united in their experience of human-wrought horror and their creative outlet of poetry, they each had distinct approaches to using it as a means to process their experiences, particularly as pertains the way they utilised form. This analysis primarily focuses on Sassoon’s ‘The Hero’ and Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, but will also include discussion of Sassoon’s ‘The Dug Out’ as well as Owen’s ‘The Send-Off’ to formulate a more nuanced take on each poet’s use of form and how, through rhyme, metre, pronouns, and diction, the poets either close or widen the narrative distance. Through this it will become clear that form integrally serves the poetry of both poets, either through the persona in the interest of persuasion through emotional connection, pertinent to the waning Victorian tradition and used more by Sassoon, or through precise imagery and language in the interest of dissuasion through generating feelings of unease, pertinent to the emerging Modernist tradition and used more by Owen.
