Dulce et Decorum Est... part 2

Today I have for you, friends, only a video, a clip from a BBC documentary on Wilfred Owen. Mr. Gray-haired Announcer Guy says a few words and then gets to reciting the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," which I wrote about on Monday... I was very surprised indeed to learn that Owen is "the most studied poet in England -- after Shakespeare (after all)." He's one of those writers, I guess, who gets shoved down the throats of high school kids, generation after generation. We have those too, here in America. To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World... I take a kind of foolish pride from the fact that I was assigned all of these books and never read any of them to completion. (Holden Caulfield don't got nothing on me.)

But now Wilfred Owen is a writer I feel I can get behind. A little dark and gloomy "War is Hell" poetry can do wonders for army recruitment -- in the correct direction, of course. Poetry, in this case, may very well have made a difference -- pounded some good sense into the heads of at least a handful of kids. It's great, but most of the people in the comments section of this Youtube video seem hung up on nothing more than Owen's homosexuality...