Modern British Poetry — Background and Themes

The Editor's Taste for the Sonic and the Martial

Untermeyer's selections and headnotes reveal a clear preference for poems with strong auditory effects and martial themes. He highlights Chesterton's "Lepanto" as "one of the finest of modern chants," and the excerpt included in the anthology—with its "Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far" and "Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums"—exemplifies the clangorous, processional quality he admires. Similarly, his praise for Kipling's "The Return" and "An Astrologer's Song" (from The Five Nations and Rewards and Fairies) suggests an appreciation for verse that carries narrative momentum and a sense of imperial or historical drama. The editor's own language in the headnotes often mirrors the poems' own energy: he writes of "the tides of marching crusaders" rolling out of Chesterton's lines, collapsing the distance between critical description and poetic effect.

War Poetry and the Shadow of 1914–1918

The anthology includes poets who served in or wrote about the First World War, such as Siegfried Sassoon (represented by poems from The Old Huntsman, Counter-Attack, and Picture Show) and Rupert Brooke (whose Collected Poems are acknowledged). Untermeyer's selections from Sassoon—a poet known for his grim, ironic depictions of trench warfare—sit alongside Brooke's more idealistic sonnets, creating an implicit contrast. The editor does not explicitly frame this as a thematic cluster, but the juxtaposition is telling. Also present is Richard Aldington, an Imagist poet whose War and Love reflects a different, more fragmented response to conflict. The anthology thus offers a range of wartime voices, from patriotic to bitter, without editorial commentary that would reconcile them.

Anthology as a Document of Its Moment

Published in 1920, Modern British Poetry captures a transitional moment in literary taste. Untermeyer includes poets who would later be seen as canonical (Hardy, Yeats, Lawrence) alongside figures whose reputations have faded (John Drinkwater, Stephen Phillips, Owen Seaman). The acknowledgments page lists permissions from a wide array of publishers, indicating the anthology's commercial and legal scaffolding. The editor's choices reflect not only aesthetic judgment but also the practicalities of copyright and availability. Notably, the anthology's title promises "modern" poetry, yet it reaches back to the 19th century (the catalog subjects include "English poetry -- 19th century"), suggesting that "modern" here means a living tradition rather than a sharp break. The inclusion of Thomas Hardy's "Going and Staying" (from The London Mercury) exemplifies this blend of old and new.

Readers approaching this anthology should attend to the headnotes as much as the poems: Untermeyer's introductions are mini-essays that reveal his critical priorities. The collection is best sampled rather than read straight through, allowing contrasts between poets—say, the imagist precision of D. H. Lawrence and the ballad swagger of Chesterton—to emerge. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full range of each poet's contribution remains to be discovered in the complete text.

I’ve spent decades shelving Untermeyer’s Modern British Poetry, its soldiers and dreamers gripped by a restless, yearning rhythm. Yet my mind keeps drifting to a quieter shelf-mate, The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell; Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D. — Reading Notes—both hunting something holy through cracked earth, though one shouts while the other merely hums. Both, strangely, whisper of home.