Scars Upon My Heart Paperback – February 9, 2006

Why on earth is this book out of print. Anyone who is remotely interested in the history of WW1 has by now undoubtably watched all the docos and read plenty of Sigfried Sassoon poems. I suppose that it is natural that this dreadful chapter of human history is amply represented by those novelists and poets who saw first hand the horrors that modern warfare can devise. The anthology that is the basis of this review, however, takes the reader to the home front, and into the lives of those mothers, wives, sisters and daughters who could only wait and hope. The lack of social power that these women felt seems to have been amplified by the frustration and fear that they felt for their fighting men. This selection of poetry fully captures the anguish that these women felt in their hopeless waiting, and this anthology I feel is an essential companion to the terrible poetic picture that the likes of Sassoon, Owen and others have long been known for.

I was referred to this book while researching women in World War 1. The perspective of the poets that were included is very different than what you normally see in War poetry of the period.

"The earth is all too narrow for our dead,So many and each a child of ours"Poets of the First World War hold a special place in our collective memory. Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon..the men...boys really..But what of the women? Those left behind, worrying, working, struggling..receiving the telegrams..nurses, volunteers, wives and widowsThere is pain and beauty in these lost voices, as dark and violent as the Somme. There is grace and charm and forgiveness and charity..and a restless desire for change.Cicely Hamilton's "Non-Combatant" is an angry cry of feminist rage, which reads closer to a Patti Smith lyric than a war poet.Like war itself, all of humanity lives here, and dies slowly in the pages. Beautifully tragic.

i read this an realised why so few WW1 women poets are well known. most of the poems in this anthology are not very readable. a few gems if you are prepared to work through the whole book. A valiant effort by the editor to compile the anthology but sadly the material available made her job difficult

Its very moving and some surprises in store when you find out who some peoples parents were, for example, or who they married. A book to dip in and out of from beginning to end.

A fine introduction into the poetry of First World War, from the viewpoint of women - those coercing men to fight with white feathers and jingoism, those vehemently against the war, those missing their spouses, those burying the dead..

interesting contrast to male poetry of the time