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Barry Hodges

  • Last seen on Apr 28 6:26 PM. Member since April 28.
  • I am a 67 year old person
  • I have 4 comments, 80 poems

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  • on For The Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon, on April 28
    Few people realise what this poem is actually about. It is actually quite a gung-ho piece and was written at the very beginning of WW1 in 1914 (probably only a few weeks after it started) and is a paean of praise to battle, bravery and fighting, saying how wonderful it is for men to die for their country. It is NOT a tragic observation on the wasted millions of young men's lives sacrificed by greed and patriotic fervour. It is actually a very repellent piece of writing, written by someone who never fought in war. How ironic that one stanza is now used as a sad remembrance of the millions slaughtered.

    And the dispute about condemn/contemn is silly. In all published versions of the poem (including those authorised by Binyon) he uses "condemn". So there.

  • on To Good Guys Dead by Ernest Hemingway, on April 28
    Surprisngly good. Hemingway must have been sober at the time. Oddly, this rather contradicts his usual gung-ho macho posturings.

  • on Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen, on April 28
    A wonderfully sad poem by Owen. What a pity that the idiots who have sent thousands to their deaths in the past few years were too badly educated to have read it.

  • on Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori by Wilfred Owen, on April 28
    One of the greatest war poems ever written. And Owen did not condescend to translate the Latin. He assumed his readers would understand. Although "sweet and fitting" might have been a good translation in 1917, I would say a better translation into "modern" English would be, "How WONDERFUL and NOBLE it is to die for one's country".