WWI

How The Bond Between Two Gay Men Produced Some Of The Finest Poems Of WWI

The warrior-poets were among the most significant chroniclers of World War I. “If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” and “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row” are lines that live on in the popular imagination, 100 years after the outbreak of hostilities.

But many of the finest poems of the Great War—including “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”—might not exist were it not for the pivotal bond between two gay men who were the era’s finest war poets: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Read More