Poems (Wilfred Owen)

Poems was a quarto volume of poetry by Wilfred Owen published posthumously by Chatto and Windus in 1920. Owen had been killed on 4 November 1918. It has been described as "perhaps the finest volume of anti-war poetry to emerge from the War".

The published volume included a sepia-toned photograph of the author in military uniform. It was edited by Owen's friend Siegfried Sassoon, with assistance from Edith Sitwell. Sassoon also wrote an introduction, including the words "The poems printed in this book need no preliminary introduction … All that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems". The preface was found, in an unfinished condition, among Wilfred Owen's papers.

The slim book was sold for six shillings. It included 23 poems, including some of his most famous work, such as including "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum Est". Only five of his poems had been published before his death, three in The Nation, and two in The Hydra. Seven were published by the Sitwells in 1919, in their annual anthology Wheels.

Owen's reputation as a war poet was quickly established immediately after the end of the war. A further 19 poems were added in an expanded second edition, The Poems of Wilfred Owen published by Edmund Blunden in 1931, and the total reached 80 (together with other fragments) in the collected poems published by Cecil Day Lewis in 1963.

A first edition copy of Poems was sold by Bonhams in 2015 for £6,250.

Poems

The volume included the following poems, listed in the order they were included in the volume:

References

Poems by Wilfred Owen, British Library
Wilfred Owen, Poetry Foundation
Poems... with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon, first edition, Chatto & Windus, 1920, Bonhams, 1 October 2014

v t e Poems by Wilfred Owen
Poems (1920)	"A Terre" "Anthem for Doomed Youth" "Apologia Pro Poemate Meo" "Arms and the Boy" "The Dead-Beat" "Disabled" "Dulce et Decorum est" "Futility" "Insensibility" "Mental Cases" "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" "Spring Offensive" "Strange Meeting" "Wild with All Regrets"
Other poems	"1914" "Asleep" "At a Calvary near the Ancre" "Cramped in that Funnelled Hole" "Elegy in April and September" "The End" "Has Your Soul Sipped?" "I Saw His Round Mouth's Crimson" "The Last Laugh" "The Letter" "Miners" "A New Heaven" "The Next War" "Soldier's Dream" "Sonnet On Seeing a Piece of our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action" "To Eros" "Training" "With an Identity Disc"