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Thank you to #Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this audio book in exchange for an honest review.





My Interest

The Edwardian Era is one of my favorites and World War I was the true end of it. I’ve read tons on the war and some on the poets. My favorite of the Anne of Green Gables books is Rilla of Ingleside in which Anne and Gilbert’s second son, Walter, becomes one of the war poets. Another favorite is Lord of the Nutcracker Men in which a sensitive, artistic father carves wooden nutcracker figures for his son and they come to look more and more scary as the war goes on–just like the poets’ poems do in real life.
The Poets, Their Stories, and My Thoughts

The Six War Poets:

[photos at the end of this post]

Rupert Brooke
Alan Seeger
Isaac Rosenberg
Robert Graves
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilfred Owen

The book opens with the most salacious details of Rupert Brook’s life. Did we need to read a dirty letter her wrote a girl? No. But it used the word c–t to describe her private parts so, naturally, in today’s world we had to be treated to it. This was when I nearly DNF-ed the whole book. All we learned about Rupert was that he wanted sex with a lot of girls related to Lawrence Olivier who were educated at Bedales (the school Princess Margaret’s children later attended) where boys and girls swam naked together (I’m pretty sure that ended before World War II). Other than that we learn that Rupert was a huge celebrity in his day.

Thankfully, the book got more interesting after pretty-boy Brooke. I’d never heard of Isaac Rosenberg, but he was fascinating. He managed to get the artistic education he wanted even though his class and religion got him put in vocational school. Nor had I heard of Alan Seeger, nephew of folk singer and song writer, Pete Seeger (“If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” among others).

The others I knew more about (I knew other facts about Brooke). I’ve read and reviewed Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, and have Robert Graves’ I, Claudius but still haven’t read it. Like Rosenberg and Seeger (the Foreign Legion!!) their lives were more interesting than Brooke’s mostly incel life by far.

Brooke (Rugby), Graves (Charterhouse) and Sassoon (Marlborough–of Catherine, Pippa, and James Middleton fame) were typical privileged upper middle to upper class young men. Sent away to school at about age 8, then on to a great public (private) school before finally heading and Oxford or Cambridge, all expected to be able to do what they enjoyed, but all served in the war by their own choice. None of these young men except Brook was “sporty” or made in the style of a military man. Such young men were slaughtered on a scale never seen before or since. A Subaltern (2nd Lieutenant) had a life expectancy of 6 weeks at the front. That they somehow managed to continue to write poetry is amazing. Like the prose of Ernie Pyle in the next war, the poems of these men–most of which became known after the war–educated the world in the reality of their war.

Like too much of history publishing today, this book skimmed the surface. In part that was due to their age at the time of the war. In part because deeper, longer, books don’t sell any more. Yet the author made comments about their appearance or other silly things and often used hyperbole about this or that being “the most beautiful in England” or “best known verses in the English….” Ugh. Graves went on to have a tremendous career as a writer. I, Claudius even became a major tv production. Brooke is well known due to his association with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Rosenberg and Seeger are nearly forgotten. While this book will give them a few new minutes of renewed fame, the salacious look at Brooke’s life will turn off not only me. This is a “history-lite” book only.
My Verdict
3.0

Muse of Fire… by Michael Korda

I listened to the audio version of this book.

This is a DNF for me. This is not at all what I thought it would be- I carefully read the description before requesting it. I stopped not terribly long after it used the word "cunt." I get it that it's a quote from a letter from Ruper Brooke's early days. I didn't like it had anything to do with WWI as seen through the lives of the soldier poets and I couldn't stomach the portion I read.

Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets denotes the biographies and key writings of six English language centered soldier poets while journeying through a chronology of war. Michael Korda shows how the poets came to their craft, joined up and fought in the war and how their writings helped shape or reflect public opinion and a have become a key reference point in our understanding of the First World War.

Korda begins with the prewar, detailing and challenging the popular perception of the idyllic life in Britain through Rupert Brooke's life, with some references to the wider chain of events and tensions. This is largely the pattern for the rest of the book, each chapter details the life of one (or sometimes two) poets following the key events and battles of the war, with some flashbacks to delineate their early lives and development of their writing.

Korda begins with Brooke and then switches to Alan Seeger, the sole non-British Empire poet detailed here. Seeger joined the French Foreign Legion. Third is Isaac Rosenberg. After that we move in to more of a melange between Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen.

While we get a cradle to grave overview of the majority of writers, four of the six were killed in the war (spoiler?). This leaves much to mourn with their potential cut short, only Graves and Sassoon survived the war with the abilities to reflect on their trauma and legacies with age.

Korda does very well detailing their lives, showing the key moments or the development of the creative drive of the poets. He mixes the full history, with biography and literary criticism. His overall concern is with their work and the war, but not just on their own merits, this work shows their relationships between each other, just how close and at times collaborative and supportive these could be. Much as the poetry shows, the experiences at the sharp end of war were dangerous, messy, traumatic and full of the inconsistencies of military life.

As someone who is more widely read of this topic and holds a torch for Ivor Gurney, I was disappointed not to see him included, but for those newer to world war I studies there is a lot of helpful details and explanations that show how poetry was wide reaching and impactful on the wider society, and how these figures battled both military and artistically, and at times their own understanding of themselves and their gender identities.

Malcolm Hillgartner's narration is very well done, especially when he adjusts his cadence to better emphasize the poet's work.

Recommended to those exploring war writings, newer to world war I studies or the popular reception to poetry and it's effects on society.