This week marks a century since the outbreak of the first world war. Chosen from 1000 years of English writing about war, poet and Oxford professor Jon Stallworthy selects some of the best attempts to think through this most extreme of human experiences. read more
SHEILA NEVINS: My favorite poem is John Donne, “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: No Man Is an Island.” It’s a great equalizer of mortality. When you’re in the business I’m in and you meet famous people and difficult people and brilliant people and successful people, it keeps all of it in perspective. read more
There were these two poems that I read in Class 10 and these are my favourite war poems. * Small Pain in my Chest by Michael Mack * A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945 by Vikram Seth I couldn’t find the link of the latter poem. read more
That’s why this poem – my sweet old etcetera by e.e. cummings – is my favorite war poem. In fact, it’s one of my favorite poems on any subject. I can’t read it without picturing my 22-year-old grandfather lying in mud and dreaming about the 19-year-old wife he left in California. read more