Asked to name the great Modernist poets and writers, I might say T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats. The name of David Jones (1895-1974) would not come to mind. My Norton Anthology of English Literature, which I read to near shreds in college, makes no mention of him. But Jones deserves to be better known.
Jones was known for his poetry and his engravings and paintings. He worked as a graphic artist; poetry and art don’t usually pay the bills. He was a veteran of World War I, and he’s increasingly coming to be recognized as one of the “World War I poets.” From 1915 to 1918, he served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers on the Western Front, and unlike many of his poetic contemporaries, he survived. The poets who didn’t survive the Great War tend to be better known and more celebrated than those who did. Jones himself served in the army longer than any other British writer.
Jones waited 20 years to publish his poetic work on the war, In Parenthesis. Reading it is to discover a Modernist masterpiece every bit as astonishing as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or The Waste Land.
Some Tuesday Readings
Poetry Club Tea Date: At the End (poetry prompt) – Tweetspeak Poetry.
“Light Shining Out of Darkness,” poem by William Cowper – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
The Wind Phone – poem by Patricia Clark at Every Day Poems.
“The Hill Farm” by John Hewitt and “The Other Side” by Seamus Heaney – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.
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