Memorial Day poem from Wilfred Owen

[JT45242]

1. Funny thing about 9/11/2001 -- it changed English textbooks

If you look at most anthologies in use for HS english classes printed before that date - -this poem is almost always in there as one of the pre-eminent examples of the lost generation of poets who wrote about the horror of WWI. (See also the Death of the Ball turret gunner https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-the-ball-turret-gunner by Jarrell)

Then I was teaching science and mentioned that poem -- the students hadn't read it. The english teachers in my school told me that it wasn't in any of the anthologies that they considered for new book adoption in about 2004.

As a country -- we are doomed to commit the same mistakes if we ignore our collective history and great visceral poems like both of these.