One Hit Wonders

ONE-HIT WONDERS: SIX POETS OF THE GREAT WAR

The greater poets of the Great War – Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg – left a substantial body of work based upon their experiences. It took a long time, but their place in literary history is now secure. But there were other poets who wrote what is now called a ‘one-hit wonder’ – a single poem, standing out from their other work, which memorably sums up one aspect of the vast tragedy. They include Julian Grenfell, W.N. Hodgson, John McCrae, Alan Seeger, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, and T.P. Cameron Wilson. These six men had a certain amount in common – all, except McCrae, in their twenties, all officer class, all volunteers, all unmarried, all wrote the kind of poetry which we call Georgian – all died. The fact that they had died, often before their work got into print, invests their words with a certain radiance and seriousness. But it is not quite an accident, because of course the earliest volunteers were the most likely to be killed, and the educated, poetry-writing men who became junior officers ran special risks.

Before I talk about these six poets in detail I’d like to focus on three short periods in the war’s history. 29th April 1915, Julian Grenfell, 27, writes ‘Into Battle’ and asks his mother to get it published. On 3rd May, John McCrae, 42, a Canadian physician now serving as a medical officer, writes ‘In Flanders Fields’. He has just come from the funeral of a friend and has noted how quickly poppies grow on the graves. He doesn’t think the poem is ready to be published yet. On 13th May, Grenfell is mortally wounded and on the 26th he dies. ‘Into Battle’ appears in the Times, along with news of his death, on the following day. Probably on 13th July, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, 26, a friend of Grenfell and of Rupert Brooke, writes ‘I saw a man this morning….’ on the Greek island of Imbros where he is stationed with the Royal Naval Division. So far as we know, this was his only poem. He doesn’t do anything with it. Some months later, McCrae finally sends out his poppy poem and it appears in Punch on 8th December 1915. It immediately becomes wildly popular.

Fast-forward to 29th June 1916, the eve of the battle of the Somme. William Noel Hodgson, 23, publishes ‘Before Action’ in the New Witness. This poem suggests that he expected to be killed, and he was killed two days later, on 1st July; that gave rise to the legend that he had actually written it two days before his death. On 4th July, Alan Seeger, 28, an American volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, is killed, leaving a group of unpublished poems including ‘Rendezvous’. In December, they appear in the United States and are soon reprinted in Britain. His friend T.S. Eliot is among those who review his book with respect. In the same summer of 1916, on 16th August, Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson, 28, publishes ‘Magpies in Picardy’ in the Westminster Gazette. It attracts little attention.

Fast-forward again, to the last winter of the war. On 30th December 1917, Patrick Shaw-Stewart is killed in France, his poem still unread. On 28th January 1918 McCrae, who has lived to see his poem republished and translated all over the world, dies. On 23rd March Cameron Wilson is killed in the great German offensive; he has gone on writing poetry but nothing as good as ‘Magpies in Picardy’.

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