Don't read this long prose-poem too carefully - let the words wash over you for a filthy, lice-ridden and sodden immersion in the WW I trenches of northern France - raw, lyrical, crude, delicate and assaulting. Poet/artist David Jones transmutes his own experiences into something extraordinary using allusions to myth, the Bible, Shakespeare and Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It's not easy reading, but for a real sense of the terror, and indeed the poetry, of war, you can't do much better.
(Kate Hobson - bwl 78 Autumn 2015 ) |
