Bloganuary #25

What is a song or poem that speaks to you and why?

The image above is a “Word Art” project that was done for me by my hairdresser! She had just started to produce different items of “Word Art” for her friends and family, which as you will have realised from my previous posts were a little bit too quaint and cute for me (although I obviously wouldn’t say so), but she said that she was really enjoying it and it was becoming far too easy. Now that is just the wrong thing to say to me, because I am always willing to assist in pushing your abilities – therefore, I asked her what was involved and whether she would be willing to try a project for me. My input was easy – she just wanted 10 words – and I repented a little and having not done Latin myself, I just picked the longer words from the title and added words that I knew either came from the sentiment of the poem or were the English translation of the Latin title. I think she did a great job, although she did admit that it was one of the hardest things she had attempted. (I’m horrible aren’t I! But I do think that it was an excellent effort and it now sits proudly all framed on the left hand side of my desk.)
So why did I pick the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfried Owen (apart from being cruel!) Well it did mean something to me, because it is one of the First World War poets that I was introduced to when at school. I found the poetry quite amazing and also the stories surrounding the poets, particularly Wilfred Owen and his friend Siegfried Sassoon. The rather salutary end to this story is that Wilfred Owen was a young lad and general infantry man, who died during the war, whereas Siegfried Sassoon was a well-educated officer, who lived through the war. They apparently became friends when recovering together in a field hospital having both been injured and it is rumoured that Siegfried Sassoon helped Wilfried with the Latin title (a bit of elitist mumbo-jumbo I think). As a 13 – 14-year-old girl, I found the stories quite salutary and this particular poem is important to me because it expresses the waste & futility of war. Anyway, I won some books as my prize for gaining the best O-levels at school and I still have the book of First World War poetry that I chose as part of my prize.

As I have grown older I have enjoyed many different types of poetry written in different languages. This introduction to poetry is quite unusual, as I was always far more scientifically minded at school, generally hated English Literature and our English teacher at the time was Irish and was ridiculed by almost everyone. He only lasted one term at our school, but I still remember his name (Mr McMahon) and although I would never have admitted it at the time, he obviously had a big impact on me.

The reason that I chose to go for poetry rather than a favourite song is because I just have so many favourites songs from folk music to musicals and so picking a favourite song was just too difficult.