1918 in poetry.html



Events

James Joyce in 1918

• Robert Graves marries Nancy Nicholson. Wedding guests include Wilfred Owen (see deaths).
• Poet Basil Bunting is imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
• April — Hu Shih, chief advocate of the revolution in Chinese literature at this time, publishes an essay, "Constructive Literary Revolution - A Literature of National Speech" in New Youth proposing a four-point reform program.
• Basil Bunting spends part of the year in prison as a conscientious objector to World War I.

Works published

• Guillaume Apollinaire, Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War
• Laurence Binyon, The New World: Poems
• Federico García Lorca, Impresiones y paisajes (Spanish for "Impressions and Landscapes")
• Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (The Secrets of Selflessness) published in Persian, his second philosophical poetry book
• Walter de la Mare, The Marionettes
• Charles Reznikoff, Rhythms, his first book of poetry, a small volume, self-published
• Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack
• Wallace Stevens, "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" is first published (it will later be included in his first poetry book, Harmonium.¹

Births

Richard Aldington in uniform during World War I

• February 17 - William Bronk (died 1999), American poet
• November 19 — W. S. Graham (died 1986), Scotts poet often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic poets
• December 8 — Hans Børli (died 1989), Norwegian poet, novelist and writer
• December 30 - Al Purdy (died 2000), a popular Canadian poet

• date unknown :
  • Louis Coxe, American poet
  • Nicholas Moore (died 1986), English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, who later dropped out of the literary world

Deaths

• June 10 - Arrigo Boito, Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer
• June 26 - Peter Rosegger, 54, Austrian poet

Killed in World War I

• January 28 — John McCrae, 35, Canadian poet, author of In Flanders Fields and lieutenant colonel serving as a field surgeon in the war, from pneumonia
• April 1 - Isaac Rosenberg, 28, English war poet
• November 4 — Wilfred Owen (born 1893), English war poet is killed in action at the Sambre-Oise Canal just a week before World War I ends. (See Events)
• See also, Guillaume Apollinaire, below

Killed in the Great Flu Epidemic

• November 9 - Guillaume Apollinaire, 38, French language poet, writer, and art critic credited with coining the word surrealism. Two years after being wounded in World War I, and still vulnerable from his injury, he died from influenza during the Great Flu Epidemic.
• December 2 - Edmond Rostand, 50, French poet and dramatist, died from influenza during the Great Flu Epidemic

Awards and honors

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sara Teasdale: Love Songs

Notes

1. ^ Buttel, Robert. The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press, p. 86. See also the LibriVox site for the complete public domain poems of Wallace Stevens.[1]

See also

Poetry portal

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry