02853cam a2200349 i 4500 1233003277 TxGeo 20240411120000.0 231102s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781631496882 hbk. 1631496883 hbk. (OCoLC)1379265731 TxGeo rda Korda, Michael, 1933-, author. Muse of fire : World War I as seen through the lives of the soldier poets / Michael Korda. [United States] : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2024] xvi, 381 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier sti rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "The First World War comes to harrowing life through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets in Michael Korda's epic Muse of Fire. Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolize the war's tragic arc and lethal fury. His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, "the handsomest young man in England" and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen's mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war's end. Korda's dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war."-- Provided by publisher. 20240429. World War, 1914-1918. Soldiers' writings. Poets 20th century Biography. Personal narratives. War poetry. QS5