Favorite Poets - E learning

"For here the lover and killer are mingled who had one body and one heart. And death who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt."

Keith Douglas is my favorite poet, and this is a quote from one of his poems. He writes many war poems and intrigues me with his stands and perspectives. Keith Douglas is a good poet because he manages to convey a message that war is horrible in different perspectives such as a soldier killing or the only soldier surviving in the second world war. (that was a thesis statement, was it??)

Keith douglas did not have a really pretty life. His parents were financially poor, and their marriage collapsed, leaving Keith with his mother. He reflected on his childhood that "I lived alone during the most fluid and formative years of my life, and during that time I lived on my imagination, which was so powerful as to persuade me that the things I imagined would come true." By University his poetic talent was recognised but he could only publish one of his volumes of poetry before he was sent to army and the war. After certain battles, he would recount them and that would become part of his poetry. Pity he died young, in his army years.

Why does Keith Douglas intrigue me? He focuses on a external impression, making even the enemies of the allied (he was english) look humane. The people in his poems have mothers, people they care about, and not just killing. This makes his poems a lot more realistic. He has many different perspectives but all convey one message, that war is horrible, and not wanted. Like in the poem, How to Kill (i remember just doing some brief stuff on that) it shows how a soldier kills an enemy. The poem makes the enemy seem normal, and by killing. The description of the enemy is: "He smiles, and moves about in ways his mother knows, habits of his." And yet Keith Douglas makes killing this person supposed to be the enemy, a burden on the soldier's mind. So it is easy to kill but difficult to handle the consequences, showing that the poet does not like war.Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not) is another poem by him, showing the aftermath of the battle. It describes tanks guns like demons mouths the place as a nightmare ground and is able to let you see a picture of the horrific effects of war.Cairo Jag was written when he was sent to the subsaharan area, near the middle east. He describes Cairo as a place but in the last stanza reaches a new world, a warground, where vegetation is of iron, metal brambles have have no flowers or berries, the dead themselves, their boots, clothes and possessions clinging to the ground, and manages to put a huge difference between cairo and a warground near cairo.

Poems How to kill, Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not),Cairo Jag

http://www.poemhunter.com/keith-douglas/poems/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Douglas