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Muse of fire : World War I as seen through the lives of the soldier poets / Michael Korda.

by Korda, Michael, 1933- author.

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New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2024]

Seeger, Alan, 1888-1916.

Rosenberg, Isaac, 1890-1918.

Graves, Robert, 1895-1985.

Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886-1967.

Owen, Wilfred, 1893-1918.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Literature and the war -- Biography.

Poets, English -- 20th century -- Biography.

War poetry, English -- History and criticism.

English poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

Soldiers' writings, English -- History and criticism.

9781631496882 (hardcover) :

1631496883 (hardcover)

xvi, 381 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, 24 cm

Introduction: The breaking point -- Halcyon days : Rupert Brooke and the long peace -- "This side of paradise!" -- "Under an English heaven" -- "Some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England" -- Alan Seeger's "rendezvous with death" -- Isaac Rosenberg : painter and poet -- Isaac Rosenberg's life and death in the trenches -- Robert Graves : "The necessary supply of heroes must be maintained at all costs" -- Siegfried Sassoon : "Brother Lead and Sister Steel" -- Wilfred Owen : "My subject is war, and the pity of war" -- Apotheosis -- Epilogue.

"His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, "the handsomest young man in England" and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen's mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war's end. Korda's dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war"-- Provided by publisher.

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