“Legion”: Harry Krumm in the Great War

The new issue of The Common, a literary journal always worth reading from cover to cover, carries my poem “Legion.” I never thought I’d write a poem about the First World War, a conflict that gave rise to more great verse in English than any other. What could I add to the lines of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney, Rupert Brooke, or Edgell Rickword, whose “Trench Poets” seems very much like the final word? What could I add, for that matter, to the reflections of those masters who had not directly participated in the effort but were profoundly and painfully affected by it, like Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling? And these are just the major names. A number of first-rate anthologies and, above all, Connie Ruzich’s priceless blog, Behind Their Lines, demonstrate just how broad and rich the poetic record really is. So why, despite my hesitation, did I go over the top? The triggering incident was an encounter with a rather badly neglected monument…