Postwar British Poetry

W.H. Auden, Philip Larking and Dylan Thomas make up the scenario of Postwar British Poetry. Even though, their styles are fairly different from one another, they all have this same sense of British tradition that all the world recognizes (they're not that pompous, though), and, of course, they all portray in one or another way the feeling in Britain after the war while using a rather casual and chit chat-like language.

"Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time."

This stanza from a W.H. Auden's poem, for example, gives me the feeling of the emptiness and the dissatisfaction that people must have been feeling in those days, even if they won the war.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

I guess we could think this is a British kid that lived during the WWs talking... his parents fucked him up... and his grandparents fucked him and his parents! War causes damages that were inherited generation from generation... all those worries, resentments, fails, tears and fears that don't seem to disappear even when parents try to.

Dylan Thomas' poems don't make sense at a first glance, but they totally do, and I must say they're extremely passionate and beautiful. *Hats off*

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.