Oxford Poetry, 1920

This is a fragile, essential artifact of a generation in transition. Assembled in the spring of 1920 by three Oxford undergraduates, Vera Brittain, C.H.B. Kitchin, and Alan Porter, the anthology gathers poems from writers who had come of age during the Great War. Robert Graves contributes pieces that would later crystallize his reputation as one of war poetry's most unflinching voices. Edmund Blunden brings his pastoral mourning. Winifred Holtby offers lyrical defiance. The collection breathes with the peculiar atmosphere of those years immediately after the armistice: grief still raw, the countryside still beautiful, young people trying to rebuild a vocabulary for joy after witnessing horror. The forms vary wildly, from tight sonnets to loose elegies, as if the poets themselves weren't sure which container could hold what they'd seen. This isn't polished, mature work, it's something more interesting: the raw sound of a generation learning to speak again.