Andrew's Wiki
Strange Meeting

Content

• A soldier has a vision in which the German soldier he killed visits him

Style

• Uneven verses
• Rhyming seems loose: just enough to keep cohesion in the poem, not enough to make it sing-songy or make it easily consumable
  • Repetition of sounds, but not rhyming: grained / ground; moan / mourn; years / yours
  • Escaped / scooped / groined
  • Groaned / bestirred / stared”
• More Gothic imagery
  • Like “Mental Cases”
  • piteous, moun, tigress, etc

Owen’s Style

• Uses traditional discourses to help up the drama (Gothic language in “Strange Meeting” and “Mental Cases”)
• Uses traditional discourses to make a greater contrast between the experiences we already know and the experience of war (ironic use of sentimental language and sonnet tropes/structures in “Greater Love,” “Futility”)
• Yet breaks apart traditional rhyming schemes (“Futility,” “Strange Meeting,” “Mental Cases”) and violates the tacit system of equally sized verses (“Strange Meeting,” “Dulce et Decorum Est”) or violates the way verses and lines are separated (“Disabled,” “Exposure”)
• Thus, he uses tradition when he wants it and discards it when he wants to