The War Sonnets of John Allan Wyeth: Why a blog about an unknown WWI poet (and a Yank at that) ?

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Why a blog about an unknown WWI poet (and a Yank at that) ?

In a nutshell, because the war poetry of John Allan Wyeth changes the landscape of First World War literature. His body of work is like a promontory hidden by mists for three-quarters of a century, and one day the mists disperse and there it stands, commanding its own space, impossible to ignore, and altering forever the configuration of features on the land. It is the extent and character of that alteration which contributors to this blog will explore.

To date Wyeth remains almost completely unknown. His book of war sonnets, This Man's Army: A War in Fifty-odd Sonnets, was first published in 1928 and reprinted the following year. The reviews of his book were not only favorable for the most part, but often remarkably prescient. And yet the book went unnoticed by the literary world, and it sank into oblivion.

In 2008 This Man's Army was republished by the University of South Carolina Press as part of Matthew Bruccoli's Great War Series of neglected WWI literary classics. Once again, the reviews have been favorable, and strong, but few in number.

The real work of assessing Wyeth's place in the literature of the First World War has yet to be undertaken. This blog represents an attempt to get the ball rolling, to approach Wyeth's work from a number of angles, and so start a number of conversations which I hope others will take up. In addition to essays, and back-and-forth discussions, links to previously published essays and reviews on Wyeth will be provided, as well as links to other sites devoted to the literature of the First World War.

All opinions, comments & questions are welcome. A reputation isn't built in a day, there is much to be considered, and the conversation may continue into the small hours. So pour yourself a pint, pull up a chair, stoke up your stogie, and join in. Never mind if your rank is PFC or PhD, or if your outfit is the Blackstrap Irregulars or Harvard U. We leave all that stuff at the door. All that matters here is what you have to say.

The background image used on this blog is a watercolor by Sir Muirhead Bone, "The bend of the River Somme near Corbie", which is also the location for one of Wyeth's sonnets, "Corbie to Sailley-le-Sec". It was painted in 1918, the same year depicted in the sonnet. Its use here is made possible through the generosity of the Imperial War Museum, under the terms of its Non-Commericial License.

3 comments:

Mario Domínguez Parra April 2, 2012 at 9:21 AM
Dear Mr. Omanson:

My name is Mario Domínguez Parra. I am a Spanish poet, translator and essayist. I have known of the existence of this blog through Tim Kendall's on War Poetry. I did not know the work of this poet till now. I am very fond of the work of such war poets as David Jones and Keith Douglas. I have several unpublished translation of some works by both.

I would like to undertake the task of reading and translating some of Wyeth's poems into Spanish. Do you think that would be possible?

My email account is: lamedwufnik@hotmail.com

Yours faithfully,
Mario Domínguez Parra
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Roger AllenApril 24, 2012 at 7:16 AM
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1914jan-00082 for what looks like an earlier poem by Wyeth.

http://www.findartinfo.com/search/listprices.asp?keyword=4426 for two paintings auctioned.
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"Of all the writers of the Lost Generation, there was perhaps none quite so lost as John Allan Wyeth. Until his 1928 book of war poems was reprinted by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli in 2008 (This Man's Army, Univ of SC Press), Wyeth’s literary reputation was non-existent. Not a single scholar of the period had written about him, or even heard of him, and his poems appeared in no anthology of First World War literature from the 1930s to the present. Yet it might have been otherwise. Wyeth had all the requisite credentials of the time for literary fame: an Ivy League education, participation in the World War, followed by nearly two decades as an itinerant expatriate in London, Liège, Paris, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Provence, Italy and Greece, first as a poet, and then as a painter. Moreover, he was known to Edmund Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, members of the Bloomsbury Group and Ezra Pound. His cycle of modernist war sonnets, when it appeared a year before A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front, was perceptively and appreciatively reviewed in a handful of journals, including Poetry. Yet Oblivion followed, swift and absolute, for the next eighty-odd years. Such are the inexplicable vagaries of literary fortune ..."

from BJ Omanson's "John Allan Wyeth: Lost Poet of the Lost Generation". The Best American Poetry. 27 May 2012. (see link below)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

THE ROAD TO BAYONVILLERS

The sidecar skimmed low down like a flying sled
over the straight road with its double screen
of wire--the blue profile of Amiens sank
below the plain--near by, a hidden blast
of gunfire by the roadside--just ahead,
a white cloud bursting out of a slope of green.
Then low swift open land and the wasted flank
of a leprous hillside--over the ridge and past
the blackened stumps of Bois Vert, bleak and dead.
Our sidecar jolted and rocked, twisting between
craters, lunging at every rack and wrench.
Through Bayonvillers--her dusty wreckage stank
of rotten flesh, a dead street overcast
with a half-sweet, fetid, cloying fog of stench.

Wyeth links

The Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Series of "lost" literary classics of the First World War. Matthew J. Bruccoli, series editor.

Cadby, Alex. "I have no words to speak of war": The Problem of Silence in the Soldier Poetry of the First World War and Present Day". Student dissertation from the University of Exeter containing a discussion of two of Wyeth's sonnets.

Gioia, Dana. "The Unknown Soldier: The Poetry of John Allan Wyeth". The Hudson Review, Vol LXI, No 2 (Summer 2008). This article appeared again as the introductory essay in the 2008 University of South Carolina Press republication of This Man's Army.

Gioia, Dana. "This Man's Army by John Allan Wyeth, Jr. (1894-1981)". "Recall Roster: recalling forgotten, neglected, underrated, or unjustly out-print-works" in War, Literature & the Arts Journal, Vol 16, Nos 1 & 2 (2004).

Huidekoper, Frederic Louis. The History of the 33rd Division A.E.F. Illinois State Historical Library, 1921.

Kendall, Tim. "French Brothels in Wartime". War Poetry blog. 1 May 2009.

Kendall, Tim. "Long-lost American Poet of the Great War". War Poetry blog. 26 May 2009.

Kendall, Tim. "John Allan Wyeth: 'Souilly: Hospital'". War Poetry blog. 28 February 2010.

Laskin, David. "Refracting war through American vernacular poetry". 14 February 2010.

Omanson, BJ. "John Allan Wyeth: Lost Poet of the Lost Generation". The Best American Poetry blog. 27 May 2012.

Preston, John Hyde. "Poetry, Giants and Lollypops". The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1929. An enthusiastic review of This Man's Army as part of an omnibus review of new poetry titles of 1928. ". . . a corking, exciting piece of work . . . "

Ruzich, Connie. "Picnic". A discussion of Wyeth's poem "Picnic: Harbonnières to Bayonvillers," from the Behind Their Lines blog, 21 October 2017.

Ruzich, Connie. "Transport". A discussion of Wyeth's poem "The Transport, I" from the Behind Their Lines blog, 11 June 2017.

Sisson, JB. "A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets: A reveiw of John Allan Wyeth's This Man's Army. Trinacria. Issue #2, Fall 2009.

Walton, Eda Lou. Review of This Man's Army in "A Sheaf of Poetry", The Saturday Review of Literature, (April 13, 1929).

Williams, Lisa. Review of This Man's Army in The Hollins Critic, (April 1, 2009).