1914 poetry

1914 A very complicated year; Austria attacking Serbia, Germany declaring war on Russia, Germany invading France. A complete outbreak of chaos 1914 the start of what would be WW1. Thousands of men mostly composed of 17 or 18 year old sent off to fight for a greater cause. Many poetry and arts came out of ww1 that depicted what was happening at the time. For example, Laurence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen” talks about young soldiers who lost their life. An excerpt from the poem says:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

This poem has a very sad truthful tone because it talks about how these young men will not grow old how “They mingle not with their laughing comrades again.” They had their lives ahead of them yet they will not be able to enjoy a single day more. In the poem the author would say “ they shall grow not old” or “ they mingle not…” instead of “ they should not grow old” and “they will not mingle…” . This type of word choice seems to give the poem a more poetic vibe although it's something I'm not used to. It hadn’t been till recently that I started to be interested In poetry. Ofcourse, a different type of poetry but poetry nonetheless. I like how poets write with what seems such ease and can put words on a piece of paper and convey such a strong feeling for the readers.

Picasso's Guernica (1937)

My first reaction to Picasso's Guernica was overwhelming. In the left corner we see a distraught mother holding her dead baby. There's a lot of violence and chaos see with the other people. So much is going one in this painting that I feel like it's connects to the time Picasso painted it which was the after math of the bombing in 1937. The horse in the middle has a spear running through it. On the right we see a woman who has seen all this violence unfold and is shocked by it. Guernica is a landscape painting that includes many geometric shapes which at first seem difficult to sort out. Picasso uses mostly triangles with a black and white color scheme. Overall I think Picasso's work is interesting, mostly because he had the ability to incorporate geometric shapes and lines into his artworks.