“Strange Meeting” is one of Wilfred Owen’s most celebrated poems of the First World War. It first appeared a year after his death in battle, in the periodical anthology
Wheels(November 1919) edited by Edith Sitwell, and has been reprinted in many anthologised selections of Owen’s work. Several critics have regarded it is as his greatest poem: one such was his friend and literary mentor Siegfried Sassoon, who in a tribute given as a radio talk in 1948 referred to “Strange Meeting” as Owen’s “passport to immortality”. The date of its composition is conjectural, but it is likely that Owen wrote it in the first half of 1918, possibly at Ripon in March/April. Between lines 29 and 36 the poem incorporates a revised version of an earlier fragment (“Earth’s wheels run oiled…
1463 words
Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Strange Meeting". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 January 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35567, accessed 31 October 2024.]
