Pauline B. Barrington - "I Was A Year In The Trenches" (1917)

Forgotten Poems #36

       I was a year in the trenches
       Among the tear and spatter
       Of shrapnel.
       Among headless men, twisted men, mad men
       In masses,
       Under the scream of shells
       Blossoming overhead
       Like flowers of flame in greenish light,
       In a world of torture, pain and dread.

Pauline B. Barrington (1876-1956)

P: The Los Angeles Graphic (1915+), The Masses (1916), Oakland Tribune (1916), The Public (1916), Contemporary Verse (1917), The Los Angeles Times (1917), Poetry (1918); A: Golden Songs of the Golden State (1917), The Melody of Earth (1918), New Voices (1919), Tall Bearded Iris: A Flower of Song (1922), Fieldbook of Illinois Wild Flowers (1936); plays, reviews, etc.

Born in Philadelphia; lived in Santa Barbara, California. Well-known for her anti-war poems; “Worked as a secretary. Contributed verse, short stories and sketches to various magazines; also reviewed books. Married to Charles Barrington.” (Nosheen Kahn, Women’s Poetry of the First World War, 1986)

“The San Diego Poetry Society owes its origin to Katherine Howard, on the occasion of her last visit in California, when Margaret Wilkinson, now associate editor of Poetry in Chicago, was a resident in the southern city. Eunice Tietjens and Pauline Barrington are also of that group of poetry lovers who formed a congenial company at that time.” (Los Angeles Evening Express, 1918)

Excerpted from Barrington’s poem ‘The Orchid Hunter’. Every now and then I come across a stanza in a longer poem that, for my tastes at least, works just as well, if not better, as a stand-alone verse. This is one of those times.

In other news, I’ll be posting a little less over the next few weeks, as I have gone home to spend the holidays with my family, but I should find time to get a few poems up here or there . . .

 
      For Pauline Barrington
                          (by Dick Whyte)

           war
      after war,
      bodies
      piling up—

      the taste of steel
      and blood,
      and the openness
      of dirt,

      and the vicious sun
      we who are not at war
      hide ourselves from
      joyfully,
      never sets


                      xoxo
                        dw
        

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