tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post4277908383390086780..comments2024-01-02T15:12:14.699+00:00Comments on War Poetry: Mary BordenTim Kendallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17917270014209480898noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-32964145048843348242016-12-17T12:54:08.191+00:002016-12-17T12:54:08.191+00:00Am interested in her link to A Stephenson.
He was ...Am interested in her link to A Stephenson.<br />He was her nephew in law, yes, but who was his wife?Marigoldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18152300855392349489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-21052966259850398762015-01-08T13:29:27.826+00:002015-01-08T13:29:27.826+00:00Gosh, an inspiration to us all, what a fascinating...Gosh, an inspiration to us all, what a fascinating life Borden left! Trademark Solicitorhttp://www.eip.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-18822356308232196562012-05-20T16:10:34.644+01:002012-05-20T16:10:34.644+01:00Borden was writing blistering anti-war poetry befo...Borden was writing blistering anti-war poetry before other war poets because she saw the pity of war, the destruction of human life, the hopeless,the waste and folly of it early on. The Forbidden Zone was not welcome by any government trying to run a pro-war campaign. Her graphic descriptions of suicide attempts,deplorable conditions, wound, and death would have turned the public against the war. The Forbidden Zone should be required reading for anyone interested in war, not just the First World War. She never idealized war but told about it in graphic, unsparing terms. In addition to Song of the Mud, her long poem Unidentified (also included in the original edition) stands, for me, as one of the most powerful poems to come out of war, any war. <br /><br />Look well at this man. Look!<br />Come up out of your graves, philosophers,<br />And you who founded churches, and all you<br />Who for ten thousand years have talked of<br /> God...<br />For you have something interesting to learn<br />By looking at this man. <br /><br />Stand all about, you many-legioned ghosts,<br />Fill up the desert with your shadowy forms,<br />And in the vast resounding waste of death,<br />Watch him while he dies; <br />He will not notice you...<br /><br />He waits for death;<br />He watches it approach;<br />His little bloodshot eyes can see it bearing <br /> down on every side;<br />He feels it coming underneath his feet,run-<br /> ning, burrowing underneath the ground;<br />He hears it screaming in the frantic air.<br />Death that tears the shrieking sky in two,<br />That suddenly explodes out of the festering<br /> bowels of the earth...<br /><br />You scorned this man.<br />He was for you an ordinary man.<br />Some of you pitied him, prayed over his<br /> soul, worried him with stories of Heaven<br /> and Hell.<br />Promised him Heaven if he would be<br /> ashamed of being what he was,<br />And everlasting sorrow if he died as he had<br /> lived, an ordinary man...<br />None of you trusted him.<br />No one of your was his friend...<br /><br />Go back, poor ghosts. Go back into your <br /> graves.<br />He has no use for you, this nameless man. <br />Scholars, philosophers, men of God, leave<br /> this man alone.<br />No lamp you lit will show his soul the way;<br />No name restore his lost identity.<br />The guns will chant his death march down <br /> the world. <br />The flare of cannon light his dying;<br />The mute and nameless men beneath his<br /> feet will welcome him beside them in the <br /> mud.<br />Take one last look and leave him standing <br /> there,<br />Unfriended, unrewarded, and unknown. <br /><br />Borden recounted her experiences in the Second World War in Journey Down a Blind Alley when, as a woman in her fifties, she returned to face another war. <br /><br />Thank you, Tim, bringing Borden to the attention of your readers. I also highly recommend Jane Conway's biography of Borden. <br /><br />PamPamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05845849566530252669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-19009120173570548222012-05-15T16:27:17.779+01:002012-05-15T16:27:17.779+01:00Tim, I wholeheartedly endorse your recommendation,...Tim, I wholeheartedly endorse your recommendation, and second your opinion that The Forbidden Zone is unique in Great War literature. I read the Hesperus reprint a coupld of years ago, and remember being struck by how modern it felt. Of course it's a mistake to value work depending on whether its sounds contemporary or not, but in comparison with, say, Bagnold's Diary Without Dates, or, from the combatant side of things, Blunden's Undertones..., it's in a league of its own. Whatever strengths and charms Blunden's memoir has - I'm currently working my way through it - it falls foul of a propensity to archaism and occasional flashes of purple prose, placing it squarely within its Georgian period and affiliations. With Borden, there is none of that: it's so terse and impressionistic that there's no possibility of dismissing it as a period piece. It's as vivid a war memoir - or memoir, period - as I think I'm ever likely to read.<br /><br />Simon @ Gists and PithsThe Editorshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06264669059410810775noreply@blogger.com