A Contrast of War Poetry

War poetry is a relatively new classification in the world of poetry. Stephen Crane and Wilfred Owen are two poets that have seen war first hand and have written many graphic and in-depth poems on war. The similarities in the war poetry of Stephen Crane and Wilfred Owen seem relatively minor when compared to the striking differences in imagery, symbolism and impressionism.

Stephen Crane was born on November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey. He later moves to New York and attends school for the first time. Crane’s father dies and his mother moves back to New Jersey, where she dies eleven years later. Crane attends Syracuse University in New York for a year, then travels to Mexico where he publishes “The Black Riders”, his first war poem. Later Crane becomes shipwrecked off the coast of Florida, which is the basis for a future book, and meets Cora Taylor, proprietress of a house of prostitution, along the way. Together they go to cover the story on the

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The only similarities that were found were that they had both condoned war and had written poetry about it. It shows troops being brutally slaughtered very vividly, evoking images in the reader's mind. With these visualizations he is able to create tense, impulsive, and shocking moments that seem to compress time. With sickening details Owen’s poems take the reader right into the battlefield and show them just how terrible and tragic war can be. There are, however, different ways of using figurative language to add to the feeling and realism of the poem. He enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and endured fourteen months of training in England.

Wilfred Owen, on the other hand, was born on March 18, 1893 Oswestry. He moved to Bordeaux in 1913, as an English teacher in the Berlitz School of Languages; one year later he was a private teacher in a wealthy family in the Pyrenees. He uses impressionism to delineate brilliant and concrete images. Although Stephen Crane never fought in battle, his experiences in these wars influenced his later poetry on war. This can be disturbing to think about. Greco-Turkish War and a year later Crane becomes a correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

Both authors used figurative language to make their poetry on war feel as if the reader were really there. Another way to use figurative language is through imagery.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 691
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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