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Question: What makes Wilfred Owen's poem 'Send Off' a well written poem!?
http://www!.englishverse!.com/poems/the_se!.!.!.

I can think of some things like the use of some personifications and oxymorons, and that the title could have a double meaning, but not much more!.

So what makes it a well written poem!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
You could also include Dulce Et Decorum Est Moribund Pro Patria and Anthem For Doomed Youth amongst others!.

Some would see this as a gross over simplification, but having been fed the patriotic line and then seeing comrades needlessly slaughtered watching another trainload go to the front lines, he must've wondered how many were coming back, indeed the lines say it: "Down the close darkening lanes, they sang their way to the siding sheds"!. Then towards the end: "Shall they return to beatings of great bells in wild trainloads!?"

Indeed: Would they even be remembered when they got back!?!.!.!."A few, a few!.!.!."how many would ever know love!? How many lovers would lose their men!?

Personal experience lets the empathy shine through, empathy being different to sympathy as you know what someone else is going through because of similar experience with empathy, where as sympathy is feeling sorry for someone, but without having faced similar pain and anguish!.

So in short, just having been there, experiencing the same things more than any language structure makes the first world war poets such as Owen, Sassoon, Graves and Brookes etc writers of great poems-they were the "embedded" CNN of their day, in effect writing from the front line!.

In an ironic twist, Owen was killed in action on November the 4th 1918; with the delay then in communications and the fog of war, his mother recieved the news as the armistice bells were ringing on Sunday the 11th, a week later, whilst she was preparing to go to church!.Www@QuestionHome@Com