Wilfred Owen and His Poetry

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Wilfred Owen and his Poetry I. To this day Owen is thought of as the leading poet of World War I. II. Owen’s poetry was on the hor­rors of WWI, especially trench warfare and gas warfare. III. Owen’s poetry dates back to 1903 when he was 10 years old. IV. The poetry Owen wrote was influenced by Keats and Shel­ley. Later on, his friend and fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon also had a profound effect on Owen’s poetic voice. V. Owen never saw his own worked published other then two magazines. VI. Edmund Blunden re-introduced Owens to the pub­lic in the 1960s with a renewed interest in poetry. VII. Only five of his poems have been published dur­ing Owen’s lifetime. VIII. Enthusiastic at the start of the war, Owen changed his opinion after being in battle. IX. Owen was traumatized by two events, suffering shell-shock. He was blown into the air by a mortar and landing in the remains of a fellow officer and was trapped for several days in a German dug out. X. Wilfred Owen was killed one week before the hostilities ended. As his parents were listening to the bells of the local church celebrating the armistice, the doorbell rang with the news every person dreaded. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) is best known as one of the most powerful war poets, who depicted the reality and horrors of the First World War. * Owen's first experience of the war was in hospitals treating the wounded soldiers - often without anaesthetic. * Wilfred Owen was killed in the last month of the war. The telegram from the war office reached his mother on Armistice Day Nov 11, 1918. * Recuperating in an Edinburgh hospital, Wilfred Owen became close friends with poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon played a key role in encouraging the young war poet. * When Owen returned
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