Wilfred Owen by Guy Cuthbertson

Abstract

reviews and of the Crack Manifesto (Manifiesto del Crack) by a group of Mexican writers including Pedro Ángel Palou, Eloy Urroz, Ignacio Padilla, Jorge Volpi, and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda. As the subtitle of this book suggests, the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño (1953– 2003) is the emblematic figure representing the emergence of the contemporary Spanish American novel. Although the essays of this work provide useful biographical and bibliographical information for each author, they are not encyclopedia entries: the contributors have approached their authors from their own unique critical approaches and points of view. The result is a highly readable work that is both informative and stimulating. Readers of this volume will discover that the Spanish American novel is not only alive and well, but that it is in a process of continual renewal and enrichment. Yet the editors also note that the dissemination of works by lesserknown writers in Spanish America is sometimes still limited to their home countries and literary success is still to some degree measured by having one’s works published by prestigious foreign presses. Still, smaller, national presses are publishing works by local writers, and their works are being read. Edward Waters Hood Northern Arizona University Guy Cuthbertson. Wilfred Owen. New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2014. isbn 9780300153002 As a young man of twenty-one, Wilfred Owen remained the boy who posed in a family snapshot as a proud soldier with gun in one hand, sword on his belt, military tent nearby, when he wrote: “After all my years of playing soldier, and then of reading history, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.” Owen died at age twenty-five, a week before the Armistice in 1918, sealing his reputation as one of Britain ’s most endearing poets. He had the ability to be mature beyond his years: he wrote “sophisticated, inventive, courageous, original work.” There was also the Owen of “arrested development ,” a determination to improve and educate himself, to achieve “progress.” His life was short, dying bravely leading his company across the Ors Canal under unrelenting machine-gun fire. His parents received the fatal telegram at noon on November 11. His childhood was solitary, bookish . He had an enquiring and artistic attitude. He was, throughout his short life, very close to his mother. His brother, Harold, remarked, “Wilfred had only one reliable relief from 74 worldliteraturetoday.org Adam Sol Complicity McClelland & Stewart A soothing balm that soon discomforts, Complicity provides everyday reflections on riveting political and social issues. The slender volume forces the reader to face the seeming beauty of violence at the core of human society. Piercing, profound, yet also playful, Adam Sol’s fourth verse collection emphasizes the importance of coming to terms with all sides of our own humanity. Angèle Rawiri The Fury and Cries of Women Sara Hanaburgh, tr. University of Virginia Press Angèle Rawiri’s novel challenges notions of womanhood and feminism through her character Emilienne, who attempts to escape the traditional values she was raised with. She succeeds in graduating from a Parisian university, becomes a women’s liberation leader, and has a professional career. Despite her successes, her family and friends call her womanhood into question. Nota Bene loneliness, the solace which my mother alone could give him. . . . She helped to protect him from growing up.” His lack of a university education left him, he thought, outside literary society. In September 1913 he was in France to teach English at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux. In the spring of 1914 he told his mother he had decided to become a poet. He avoided the war for a while, spending time drawing pictures of wounded soldiers he had seen at a military hospital in Bordeaux, sending them to his younger brother “to educate you to the actualities of the war.” In October 1915 he enlisted in the military, joining the 28th Battalion of the London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles). His experiences provided the background of his poetry. In “Anthem for a Doomed Youth,” he spoke for the many: “What passing-bells for those who die like cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns. / Only...