Annie
My Dad’s favourite poem is ‘In Parenthesis’ by David Jones, a First World War poem which he discovered after we visited Mametz Wood two years ago. Mametz Wood was part of the Battle of the Somme and is commemorated with a statue of a red dragon because the soldiers who attacked were from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. The Welsh Division lost about 4,000 men, killed or wounded. Overgrown shell craters and trenches are still visible in the wood. The reason he likes this poem is because it is an epic poem, which means it is as long as a book, and the writing is very lyrical mixing beautiful words and common slang. My Great Great Grandfather Harry Long died in The Battle of the Somme.
If you want to find out more about David Jones and how 'In Parenthesis" has been made into an opera watch this fascinating documentary.
An extracxt from In Parenthesis
David Jones
Racked out to another turn of the screw
the acceleration heightens;
the sensibility of these instruments to register,
fails;
The responsive mercury plays laggard to such fevers - you
simply can't take any more in.
And the surfeit of fear steadies to dumb incognition, so that
when they give the order to move upward to align with 'A',
hugged already just under the lip of the acclivity inches below
where his traversing machine-guns perforate to powder
white-
white creature of chalk pounded
and the world crumbled away
and get ready to advance