Saturday, March 03, 2012

Ieper, Ypres, Poet David Jones

David Jones is not as well known as many other poets of the WWI era, see http://worldwar1worldwar2.blogspot.com/#!/2007/11/war-poets-poetry-from-trenches-wwi.html
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Meet him here.  He wrote of Ypres.  Find his biography at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/david-jones
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My uncle (now long deceased, but I remember) who fought at Ypres used to call it "Wipers."  That reference is part of David Jones' work: He wrote, in notes to Part III of his long poem, In Parenthesis: "It was held by some that 'Wipers" was only proper in the mouth of a man out before the end of 1915, by others that the user must have served at the First Battle of Ypres in 1914.
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In Parenthesis:   Read a review at http://www.arduity.com/poets/jones/inparenthesis.html; and Part VII at http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/WWI/poets/InParenthesis.html.  Discussion, and excerpts from Part II: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/20century/topic_2/crossing.htm