Highbrow Magazine - poets https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/poets en Siegfried Sassoon: The Rebel Soldier a Century On https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/7469-siegfried-sassoon-rebel-soldier-century <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 03/12/2017 - 15:55</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1sassoon.jpg?itok=dL_ld8Tx"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1sassoon.jpg?itok=dL_ld8Tx" width="480" height="354" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>The rail journey from London to Liverpool in 1917 took four-and-a-half hours. Not an easy trip at the best of times but a particularly anxious one for a young army officer on leave from his regiment on an early day in July. Siegfried Sassoon, as the military cross awarded 11 months earlier testified, may have gained a reputation as a brave soldier, who was willing to risk his own life to pursue the enemy, and may have begun to make his name as one of the finest poets of his generation but he firmly believed, as his train pushed on northwards, that he was about to put at risk all he had achieved and indeed, all he hoped to achieve.</p> <p>Tempted as he might be to step back from the brink, he knew it was now too late, for his words of protest at the way the British Government was unnecessarily prolonging the War, had already been written and widely circulated. At a time of patriotic fervor, when any doubts about the conflict were likely to be viewed as bordering on treason, Sassoon was convinced he had turned himself from war hero into war pariah. Hence, he writes in a letter to his superior, “I am fully aware of what I am letting myself in for.”</p> <p>Despite his best efforts, however, his conviction that he would soon be the object of national contempt proves to be misplaced. Having been summoned by his commanding officer to attend a meeting at an army base near Liverpool, he is treated with kid-gloves. Offered a cigar, he is given the opportunity to withdraw his statement of protest and forget all about it. For Sassoon, looking to make a stand against the war, prepared psychologically for a court-martial and possible prison-sentence, the temptation to disavow his act of defiance is not very strong.</p> <p>Refusing a medical-board that would most likely blame his behavior on a nervous breakdown, he waits it out until his friend, Robert Graves - he of later <em>I, Claudius</em> fame - persuades him that the authorities will refuse him the public infamy and martyrdom he seeks. If he continues to decline to accept medical help, says Graves, choosing to be economical with the truth, only a label of insanity and an asylum awaits.  Sassoon, believing he has lost his most important battle, succumbs, is declared to be suffering from shell-shock and handed over to the care of Dr W. H. Rivers, the eminent neurologist based at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh.</p> <p>Even when the matter of Sassoon’s protest is raised in the House of Commons by a sympathetic MP, supporters of the war, aware of his outstanding military record, refuse to view his condemnation of  the British Government for sacrificing thousands of the country’s young men, as a political intervention deserving of serious attention. Instead there is something “radically wrong” with the officer, due to him suffering from a state of “nervous agitation.” Dissent then is gently and extremely effectively stifled by calculated kindness.</p> <p>Yet, looking back a hundred years, it is precisely dissent that describes Sassoon`s behavior. Composed with careful and targeted deliberation, he writes his statement reluctantly, wishing he might be like one of the youthful soldiers in his unit - like young Patterson, for example, “who had come out to fight for his country undoubting.”  Instead, however, he purposely chooses to put himself at the head of those many voices in the country opposed to the conflict that was wasting so many lives in France.</p> <p>There is no single explanation for why Sassoon decides to break rank on that June day in 1917 but rather a range of interconnected reasons - some building over time, others more recent; some, rather vague, others easier to define.  Arguably, his strong sense of comradeship, developed as a result of his public school education, causes him to empathize more than most with the suffering of his fellow soldiers - both officers and enlisted men.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2sassoon.jpg" style="height:469px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>As the 1916 Battle of the Somme gives way to the Battle of Arras and his colleagues and friends are either injured or killed, sometimes as in the case of Edmund Orme through the cruelest of ironic circumstances, his despair intensifies. Haunted by his experiences in the war - finding the body of a dead German “I thought what a gentle face he had”) or listening to the shouts of a dying soldier in the hospital bed next to him - Sassoon suffers nightmares - dreams of “parcels of dead flesh and bones, faces glaring at the ceiling, faces turned to the floor, hands clutching neck or belly…” - that prevent him from sleeping. Returning home on leave, he sees himself and fellow soldiers as “survivors… carrying something in our heads which belonged to us alone, and to those we had left behind in the battle.”</p> <p>If, initially, Sassoon’s feelings of despair and fury are directed at the enemy, leading to a new uncompromising harshness in his poetry - by 1917 and the battle of Arras, various influences have led him to focus on his own side - particularly on those, either back in England or in secure positions behind the Front Lines, who, “glory in the mock-heroism of their young men… and in the mechanical phrases of the Northcliffe Press” and who sometimes seem more concerned with their own welfare than the welfare of those doing the fighting. One general, he notes, forbids the issue of steel helmets to avoid making the men “soft.”</p> <p>Reading also plays an important role in Sassoon’s gradual disillusionment with the war. At the Front he reads a radical Danish magazine, which talks of “The sons of Europe…being crucified on the barbed wire…”Back home, Henri Barbusse`s vivid depiction of the suffering of war in the recently translated, <em>Le Feu</em> reinforces his horror at the barbarity he is witnessing and H. G .Wells’s <em>Mr Britling Sees It Through</em>, (t is a war without point) drives home a growing sense of the futility of the conflict. Bertrand Russell’s <em>Justice in War Time</em> also shapes a developing hostility to the role of the British Government in prolonging the slaughter.</p> <p>Arguably however, most significant is his time at Garsington Manor, the Oxfordshire home of Ottoline Morrell and her politician husband, Philip, who passes on his confidential knowledge that the German offer of a negotiated peace had been rejected by the British Government. Also at Garsington, Sassoon encounters a number of pacifist conscientious-objectors, whose refusal to accept the prevailing orthodoxy about the necessity to ruthlessly crush Germany’s imperial ambitions, provides Sassoon with the confidence and encouragement to make his stand.</p> <p>As it seems increasingly likely that the hopes for a quick end to the conflict are illusory, due to the weakening of the Allied Forces and the revelation that the government’s war aims are now more offensive rather than defensive, it is a meeting with Bertrand Russell in June 1917, organized by Ottolline Morrell, that finally causes Sassoon to draft his statement.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3sassoon.jpg" style="height:755px; width:496px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Measured, personal and informed by a powerful sense of justice, the document accuses the British State of deception and “callous complacence” to the sufferings of the troops. Written with an under-stated authority as “an act of wilful defiance... on behalf of soldiers” at the Front, it causes friends, even such close and sympathetic ones as Robbie Ross, famous for his role in the trial of Oscar Wilde, to urge its author to think again. Yet, Sassoon is unwilling to listen to all the advice he receives to withdraw his statement and only the wish to avoid being declared insane finally outweighs his fear of the disgrace of a court-martial, the pain of imprisonment and even the possibility of death by execution.</p> <p>Ultimately then, the government wins. Sassoon is treated for shell-shock, returns briefly to fighting and lives on as a well-respected man of letters into his 80s, leaving the question of whether a different official response to his protest might have made a difference to the outcome of the conflict, hanging.</p> <p>Whatever might have happened if Sassoon had been made a martyr, looking back a hundred years at his decision to write his statement in spite of the probable consequences, reminds us of the potential capacity of the individual to resist the powerful forces ranged against him. He may have failed to do what he set out to do, but the courage of his actions continues an example to others. </p> <p>It was this courage that caused him to risk his own life both at the Front and back at home. No doubt, his public-school education, his reading, his experiences on the battlefield, the influence of his friends and colleagues were all factors that contributed to his “act of wilful defiance.” Yet, also worth considering, is a further factor -  his homosexuality, hidden from himself as much as from others. Did this crucial aspect of his identity also play a part in providing Sassoon with the inclination and resolve to defy the Establishment? Having been made to feel an outsider because of his sexuality, he was arguably already in revolt against authority and its conventions before a shot was fired.</p> <p>                                                                                                                       </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Mike Peters is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/siegfried-sassoon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">siegfried sassoon</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/poets" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poets</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/english-poets" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">english poets</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-war-i" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">world war i</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mike Peters</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 12 Mar 2017 19:55:58 +0000 tara 7419 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/7469-siegfried-sassoon-rebel-soldier-century#comments Laurel Ann Bogen and the Healing Art of Poetry https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2322-laurel-ann-bogen-and-healing-art-poetry <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 09:24</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2Bogen.JPG?itok=7rU8WMRc"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2Bogen.JPG?itok=7rU8WMRc" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> This year was only the fourth time in U.S. history that a poet read at a presidential inauguration.  Only Democratic presidents have followed the tradition, started by President Kennedy in 1961 with Robert Frost.   Bill Clinton tapped Maya Angelou to read at his 1993 inauguration and Miller Williams, father of singer Lucinda Williams, at his second one in 1997.</p> <p>  </p> <p> For Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, Cuban-American Richard Blanco read “One Today,” a poem he wrote for the occasion.  With verse meant to heal the nation after the Newtown shootings, the poem received positive to mixed reviews.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Poems like this are called occasional poems and are difficult to write,” says acclaimed poet Laurel Ann Bogen, who also teaches poetry at UCLA.  “Of course, in this type of circumstance expectations are high and as a writer you are constrained by time and subject.”</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3Bogen.JPG" style="width: 225px; height: 300px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Writing inspiring and healing poetry is familiar to Bogen, who won the esteemed American Academy of Poets College Prize while attending the University of Southern California at only age 17 in the late 1960s.  She has since won numerous awards and her books, such as <em>Washing a Language</em> and <em>Do Iguanas Dance, Under the Moonlight?, </em><em>stand the test of time.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> Speaking to Bogen in her West Los Angeles home, I notice the walls are covered with framed media-coverage of her work, avant-garde pictures spanning decades of her performing the spoken word, and original artwork created from her verses.  Books spill out from every nook and cranny of the room while her large black cat sleeps under the California sun streaming through the window.</p> <p>  </p> <p> One reason she teaches is to spread her love of poetry.  From 1996 until 2002 she was literary curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she coordinated the Writers in Focus poetry series.   And the performance troop <em>Nearly Fatal Women</em>, comprised of poets Suzanne Lummis and Linda Albertano, along with Bogen have performed nationwide.</p> <p>   </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4Bogen.JPG" style="width: 198px; height: 250px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> “Poetry saved my life.  I’ve suffered from mental illness and find that reading, writing and performing poetry allows a focus for a mind that is rife with conflicting thoughts.  I also teach poetry to patients at a mental health facility here in Los Angeles,” Bogen says.  “I have seen many times people open up as poetry becomes an outlet for thoughts that cannot be expressed any other way.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Bogen is especially noted for her live performances, with her next book of poems inclusive of bar codes that can be scanned by a smart phone to hear her live readings.  The yet-to-be-titled book comes out next year, and will be her eleventh.  She has also been published in more than 100 publications.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But she reminds me that poetry is not strictly a scholarly art form.  To the unfamiliar, poetry can seem inaccessible she says.  Although older poets living and passed are well known, poetry is flourishing in today’s world.  Modern times have brought many new forms to the medium. </p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/6bogen.jpg" style="width: 290px; height: 450px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Poetry slams are competitions of spoken word popular with college students.  In addition, a Google search reveals more than 50 types of poetry in addition to the numerous traditional styles.  Just like modern opera and ballet, poetry has evolved to attract younger readers.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  “Some of my students just need a creative outlet, or have something they want to say,” says Bogen.  “That’s not say that beginning poets are necessarily good, but that’s not the point.  I myself experienced a 12-year period where I could not get published.  Looking back, my poems from that time were lacking, but I was persistent.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Being a poet is not going to make anyone wealthy; the phrase “starving artist” has a ring of truth to it.  Many keep their day jobs. T.S. Elliot was a banker at Lloyds of London and William Carlos Williams, who wrote <em>Poems</em> in 1909, practiced medicine for the next 40 years.  Mary Oliver, America’s current best-read living poet, has said she only took jobs throughout her life that were not too involved, lest she be distracted from writing.  The richness of poetry may never be found in money or fame, but rather deposits into the soul. </p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Mark Bizzell is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/laurel-ann-bogen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">laurel ann bogen</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ucla" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ucla</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/poetry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetry</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/poets" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poets</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-poets" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us poets</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-poets" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american poets</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-poetry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american poetry</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mental-illness" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">mental illness</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/miller-williams" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">miller williams</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-frost" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert frost</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-blanco" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert blanco</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bill-clinton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bill Clinton</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/inauguration" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">inauguration</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mark Bizzell</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:24:55 +0000 tara 2641 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2322-laurel-ann-bogen-and-healing-art-poetry#comments