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Learn More. “Strange Meeting” was written by the British poet Wilfred Owen. A soldier in the First World War, Owen wrote “Strange Meeting” sometime during 1918 while serving on the Western Front (though the poem was not published until 1919, after Owen had been killed in battle). The poem's speaker, who is also a solider, has descended ...
- Summary
- Structure and Form
- Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
- Historical Background
‘Strange Meeting‘ describes a soldier who escapes from battle and finds himself in a hellish, underground tunnel where he encounters the ghost of an enemy soldier he killed. The enemy soldier speaks about the futility of war and the shared humanity of all soldiers, ultimately revealing their potential for friendship despite the conflict. Written in...
‘Strange Meeting‘ is composed of four stanzas of varying lengths. This irregular structure reflects the chaotic and fragmented nature of war. The poem’s free form and inconsistent stanza lengths emphasize the disjointed experiences and the surreal, dreamlike encounter in the afterlife. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, with five poetic feet...
Stanza One
Even at the start of ‘Strange Meeting,’ the poem references war; for Owen, the natural habitat, the natural instincts, of a soldier is war. The start is relatively benign; there is nothing strange about escaping battle down a tunnel (in the First World War, there was a British plot to try and tunnel into German territory, hence the recurring imageryof holes and tunnels).
Stanza Two
The dead, ever prevalent in Owen’s work, crop up in the second stanza of ‘Strange Meeting‘. The words ‘encumbered sleepers’ implies a relatively peaceful passing, however as soon as the soldier passes by them, he awakens one of the sleepers. The use of ‘sleepers’ is also heavily ironicon Owen’s part, given that it is something peaceful, yet however, the peacefulness of the image implied by ‘sleepers’ is undercut in the third stanza.
Stanza Three
It is worth noting that this is perhaps one of the most bloodless poems that Owen wrote. He eschews the in-depth look towards brutalities that most Owen poems usually claim – omitting the description of the injuries, instead, for what was lost. Although the first two lines lend an idea – though there is no gore, the person speaking is terrified – the presence of war is still felt. It is also worth noting that ‘Strange Meeting‘ is one of the most silent that Wilfred Owen wrote; his onomatopoei...
‘Strange Meeting‘ was written in 1918 and stands in the forefront of Owen’s achievements; the quote, ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’ is to be found carved on Owen’s memorial in Shrewsbury, and Siegfried Sassooncalled it Owen’s ‘pass into immortality’.
- Female
- Poetry Analyst
May 19, 2024 · Wilfred Owen’s poem “Strange Meeting” starts with the speaker escaping from the battle field and entering into a deep (profound), dark (dull) tunnel which was created (scooped) or cut (groined) through the granite bedrock long ago by some massive (titanic) wars in the past. So, it looks like our speaker here is a soldier who escapes from ...
- Jayanta Kumar Maity
Nov 9, 2017 · The rhymes are near-misses that keep us on edge throughout the poem, echoing the strange setting of the poem and the troubling nature of the poem’s subject matter. The ‘rhyme’ comes from the similarities between the consonants rather than the vowel sounds. Such a rhyme scheme also echoes the paradoxical nature of ‘Strange Meeting’.
Nov 2, 2023 · Photo by Ryan Hoffman on Unsplash. 'Strange Meeting' Summary. 'Strange Meeting' is a poem about reconciliation. Two soldiers meet up in an imagined Hell, the first having killed the second in battle. Their moving dialogue is one of the most poignant in modern war poetry. Wilfred Owen fought and died in WW1, being fatally wounded just a week ...
Marc D. Cyr. II. Wilfred Owen is the best-known war poet in English-language literature, and "Strange Meeting" is arguably not just his most famous poem, but his best. Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and mentor, and the editor of the first fairly extensive collection of Owen's poems, judged it to be his "mas terpiece" (Siegfried's Journey 59 ...
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Strange Meeting. A twenty-first birthday present, the complete poetical works of Shelley from his brothers and sister, was to provide the title for Wilfred Owen's most problematical poem. In Shelley's "TheRevolt of Islam" we read: Gone forth whom no strange meeting did befall. STRANGE MEETING was written in the spring or early summer of 1918 ...
