The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 101. Four Geoffrey Dearmer Poems from the War

The finality, futility, and fatalities of war are stirring and emotionally presented in these poems.  Thanks for finding these for us, @AC Benus.

1 hour ago, ReaderPaul said:

The finality, futility, and fatalities of war are stirring and emotionally presented in these poems.  Thanks for finding these for us, @AC Benus.

Thanks, ReaderPaul. Dearmer is one of the best WW1 soldier poets, imo. His work was long neglected, but starting in the late 1980s, received a critical reevaluation. Fortunately, he was around still to accept this overdue recognition in person. And he was able to tell interviewers he'd been forced to give up poetry in the 1920s because no magazine would buy his work after his (rather too open) book appeared in 1918. Dearmer only passed in 1996.

Thanks again!  

These four poems recall how much each surviving front line soldier paid for the world that emerged in 1920. And how much more did subsequent generations pay when their receipts - their poetry, their histories, their true selves - were buried by those who brutally enforced their versions of normality? Thank you for making us more complete in bringing these to everyone again. 

On 7/30/2023 at 12:16 PM, Parker Owens said:

These four poems recall how much each surviving front line soldier paid for the world that emerged in 1920. And how much more did subsequent generations pay when their receipts - their poetry, their histories, their true selves - were buried by those who brutally enforced their versions of normality? Thank you for making us more complete in bringing these to everyone again. 

Thank you, Parker. Since you've penned these words, I've come in contact with Martin Taylor's Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches. Mr. Taylor was Librarian at the British Imperial War Museum, and with this 1989 anthology and analysis, he dared to drag the same-sex love nature of most WW1 poetry to full, exposed sunshine. He is the one who single-handedly brought about Geoffrey Dearmer's reevaluation, which has led to Dearmer now commonly being considered among the most important soldier-poets of the time. Lads is a very important book, although it was literally years of reading and researching on themes of First World War poems before it came to my attention. Thanks internet  

Taylor published two books on same-sex love themes in history, but then sadly fell in 1996, one of the countless Gay men of his generation dead much too young