Talk:Wilfred Owen
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I removed the following from the Wilfred Owen page:
[http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=1034&full=yes&ftpsite=ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/ Owen's collected work at Project Gutenberg]
While this seems to be well-formed, it doesn't display properly, probably due to the http & ftp links in the address. One way around this would be a makeashorterlink.com ref, but that wouldn't necessarily be futureproof. Any better ideas? -- Nairobiny
- I changed it - it seems to work better now (at least for me) --Camembert
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- Yeah, that's the bunny.. thanks! -- Nairobiny
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[edit] School
I think it is good to hear that Wilfred Owen and Sassoons poetry is being taught and analysed around the UK in schools. A good start for kids. - Erebus555 ↕ TALK
[edit] Image
This page could do with a photo of him. There are several to be found on the web, but I have been unable to establish the copyright status of any of them. --BillC 22:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Sassoon
Why was the sentence on his meeting with Sassoon removed? Most biographies of Owen remark on the importance to his work to their meeting while both were recovering in Craiglockhart War Hospital. See here for example BillC 09:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)--
- I don't think it was removed, only moved – in fact, the entire section was moved, but is still there. --MarkSweep 14:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
The references to Sassoon are a bit biased. I'm putting an NPOV on this e03bf085 12:27, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
- Having played with it a bit, I think we can remove the NPOV tag now. Would you agree? Mgriffin 14:27, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Good stuff, I removed another weird line about "an inferior poet known as Siegfried Sassoon", seemed to jar with the following paragraph describing Sassoons's influence on Owen. e03bf085 10:15, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "Owen was believed by many to be one of the finest poets of WWI."
I don't like reverting edits, and I agree with the message that was inserted by the last contributor, but this sentence already exists in a near-identical form in the second sentence of the article. --BillC 21:53, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Suicide speculation
I would get rid of the sentence of his death being a possible suicide, if it isn't being cited. The (citation needed) has been there for weeks.
Moved to here: There is some speculation that his death was in fact a suicide. Specifically, he stood and exposed himself to machine gun fire unnecessarily.[citation needed] --BillC 21:45, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I have heard no speculation Wilfrid Owen commited Suicide. Every biography I have read of him and his letters state that he wanted to, and at times thought he would, survive the war.
[edit] Poetry Section
This section is extrememly short and somewhat confusing. Where does it say that Owen is God? And who exactly regards his works as holier than the Bible?
[edit] Homoeroticism
The paragraphs in the 'Relationship with Sassoon' concerning Owen's homoeroticism - is there any citation or evidence for this ? Or is this just random speculation ? If the former, is this just more than one author's attempt to stir up controversy, or do others accept this ? If the latter, it needs pruning. The Yeti 01:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
In the words of the great Joe Orton: "What do you need: a fucking telegram?" The homoeroticism of Owen's poetry is commonly accepted -- except by the chronicly homophobic and morons. One poem "To Eros" even states the gender as male. But I'm sure you haven't read that either. Robert Graves, who was a friend of both Owen and Sasson, writes in his autobiography Goodbye To All That that Owen was: "an idealistic homosexual with a religious background". Sacheverell Sitwell, who also personally knew him through Osbert, told his biographer: "Of course he was homosexual, poor thing." Hibbard p513 You may also want to read the new Sassoon biography. Homoeroticism? Owen's poems are practically the litmus test against which others are measured for this: "The homoerotic elegy is one of the central genres of English poetry: Gray's elegy, Tennyson's In Memoriam, and the poems of Wilfred Own are some of the famous examples of this long and rich tradition." (p236 Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss In English Renaissance Literature. Guy-Bray, Stephen. University of Toronto Press.) "The elegy that Frost wrote for this beloved friend enters the genre of homoerotic love poems...to Wilfred Owen, who sends a poem and his 'identity disc to sweet friend,' imploring that 'may thy heartbeat kiss it, night and day..." (Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition. Kilcup, Karen. University of Michigan Press.)"There is abundant evidence in his writing of a strong homoerotic impulse, something that he seems to have recognised and accepted without much difficulty." pxxii Wilfred Owen, The Truth Untold. Hibbard, Dominic. And in a review of that book: Wilfred Owen Without the Myths. Contemporary Review, May, 2003 "Dominic Hibberd is an acknowledged authority on Wilfred Owen and the present volume is an excellent introduction to the poet, dispelling many of the myths with which Harold had surrounded him. In writing Journey from Obscurity, his three-volume autobiography which, for many years, was assumed to be both an objective and accurate record, Harold's portrait of his older brother was more than a trifle coloured by what he perceived as the failures in his own life, his obsession with social class and his abiding fear that the public might discover that Wilfred was homosexual. His mother was, clearly, jealous if the affections of her first-born were dire cted towards anyone but her. Whilst working as a private tutor in France he was befriended by the homosexual poet, Laurent Tailhade; in London, he was drawn into the gay circle of Harold Monro, Robbie Ross and Charles Scott Moncrieff." When Hibbard published an earlier study of Owen which stated that Owen had corresponded with gay guru Edward Carpenter, Hibbard was subject to a famous stinging article in the New Statesman (see 1987) by Carpenter's literary executor Jonathan Cuthill, which accused him of blind ignorance with regard to homosexual culture (e.g. regarding Shadwell Stair being a straightforward poem about homosexual cruising.) The other major biographer is John Stallworthy 1974. But Harold Owen was still alive when he was doing his major work and to gain access to his papers he couldn't be as frank as wished. I won't be defending this again here because I've learnt it is pointless to defend the obvious against idiots. Engleham 16:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Yawn. I ask legitimate questions, and get called an idiot. Grow up, and stop assuming everyone's anti-gay ... seems you have a chip on your shoulder. The Yeti 01:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
"I ask legitimate questions". No, you asked an astonishingly ill-educated one. You hadn't read Owen's poetry with any perception, read any recent biography, or even bothered to Google. Yet you felt entirely confident in the depths of your ignorance to demand an accounting. If it was apparent you'd at least made a token effort before asking the question, I might have been polite. But when people consider changing articles because they entertain a mere notion, but can't be bothered doing the tiniest bit of research to confirm their belief, i.e. when ignorance is allied with presumption, that's when I have a chip. And I'm as comfortable with that as you are with the smug laziness that's bred your stupidity. As it is, I did you a favour by providing you with the facts you couldn't be bothered finding for yourself. And your response: "Yawn." Which merely confirms what I've written. Engleham 06:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Yawn again. You really are up you own arse. It is irrelevant who I am, or whether I've ever read a jot of Owen's work, or whether I'm right or wrong ; what matters is that you are writing in an encyclopeadia stating things as facts, but not bothered to offer proof of those facts other than along the lines of 'Its bloody obvious ain't it ? And if it ain't to you, you're really thick' . Fantastic argument. Yes, at least now I got you to offer citations for your comments, something that should be obvious to someone of your absolute intelligence to have done so from the start. PS I didn't change your article. The Yeti 23:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That was a snarky discussion. We have to remember, as editors, that many people are exposed to a topic for the first time through Wikipedia. So what may be obvious to the educated may not be to the uneducated or ill informed. To build a reliable encyclopedia, information must be cited appropriately, just because you know something doesn't mean everyone in the world does. We have to keep the average reader in mind. IvoShandor 11:20, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Thanks
I am learning about Wilfred Owen in literature so putting some of his poems on here has been really helpful
Thanks From Emily
now i have to do an analysis of three poems *groans*
←86.128.154.178 20:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)≈°°thanks°≈86.128.154.178 20:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)→ηΘψέГɛ ТΩ Яǚɳ……………'Bold text'Bold textItalic text
there is something in "references in popular culture", which seems to be double...point 5 and 10 I think...217.225.113.105 18:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
