1917 in poetry

Events

• January — Philosopher Hu Shih, the primary advocate for the revolution in Chinese literature at this time to replace scholarly language with the vernacular, publishes an article in the magazine New Youth titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", in which he originally emphasizes eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart.
• February — The Little Review moves from Chicago to New York City with the help of Ezra Pound.
• May — W. B. Yeats acquires Thoor Ballylee in Ireland.
• May 2 — English poet Marian Allen completes the poem "To A. T. G." a few days after hearing of the death in action of her fiancé Arthur Greg, the first of several to his memory.
• May-June — T. S. Eliot takes over as editor of The Egoist, a London literary monthly, when Richard Aldington leaves for the British Army.
• July
• * English poet Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" against prolongation of World War I and is sent by the military authorities to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where on August 17 Wilfred Owen introduces himself. With his encouragement, Owen writes "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est"; the latter work's horrifying imagery makes it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written. Like almost all Owen's poetry, these remain unpublished until after his death in action next year.
• * With the United States not yet fighting in World War I, Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings and Robert Hillyer volunteer for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.
• * Last issue of , founded by Alfred Kreymborg in 1915 and publishing poetry and other writing, as well as visual art; contributors include William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, T. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Skipwith Cannell and Lola Ridge.

• July 15 — Welsh-language poet Hedd Wyn posts his awdl "Yr Arwr" as his entry for the poetry competition at the National Eisteddfod of Wales on the same day as he marches off with the 15th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers towards the Battle of Passchendaele in which he will be killed a fortnight later. On September 6 at the ceremony of Chairing of the Bard at the Eisteddfod, held at Birkenhead, the empty druidical chair which Wyn, as winner, should have occupied is draped in a black sheet, "The festival in tears and the poet in his grave." This becomes known as "The Eisteddfodd of the Black Chair."
• Summer — Russian writer Boris Pasternak composes My Sister, My Life; this circulates orally and in manuscript for several years before publication.
• c. Summer — The Siuru expressionistic and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by a group of young poets and writers.
• October 20 — 51-year-old poet W. B. Yeats marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees at Harrow Road register office in London with Ezra Pound as best man, a couple of months after having had a proposal of marriage to his ex-mistress's daughter, Iseult Gonne, rejected.
• November — Publication of The Muse in Arms, an anthology of British war poetry.

  Works published in English

Australia">Australian poetry">Australia

• Arthur Henry Adams, Australian Nursery Rimes, Australia
• C. J. Dennis:
• * The Glugs of Gosh
• * Doreen
• Henry Lawson, "Scots of the Riverina", Australia

  United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Aftermath of Easter Week, Ireland
• Rupert Brooke, Selected Poems
• May Wedderburn Cannan, In War Time
• Richard Church, The Flood of Life
• Austin Clarke, The Vengeance of Fionn
• Walter de la Mare, The Sunken Garden, and Other Poems
• John Drinkwater, Tides
• Hilda Doolittle, The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems
• T. S. Eliot:
• * Prufrock, and other observations
• * Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry
• Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers
• Ivor Gurney, Severn and Somme
• Thomas Hardy:
• * Collected Poems
• * Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous
• F. W. Harvey, Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a German Prison Camp
• May Herschel-Clarke, Behind the Firing Line and other poems of the War
• W. N. Hodgson, Verse and Prose in Peace and War
• D. H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through
• Joseph Lee, Work-a-Day Warriors
• Ewart Alan Mackintosh,
• John Masefield, Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems
• Alice Meynell, A Father of Women, and Other Poems
• Charles Murray, The Sough o' War
• George William Russell, Salutation
• Vita Sackville-West, Poems of East and West
• Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems
• Will Streets, The Undying Splendour
• Edward Thomas, Poems
• Sir William Watson, The Man Who Saw, and Other Poems Arising Out of the War
• Charles Williams, Poems of Conformity
• W. B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse

  United States">American poetry">United States

• Conrad Aiken, Nocturne of Remembered Spring
• John Peale Bishop, Green Fruit
• Witter Bynner, Grenstone Poems
• Florence Earle Coates, A 16-page pamphlet of seven war poems published privately in Philadelphia in support of American involvement in World War I.
• Hilda Doolittle, The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems American poet published in the United Kingdom
• Edgar A. Guest, Just Folks
• Archibald MacLeish, Tower of Ivory
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems
• James Oppenheim, The Book of Self
• Edward Arlington Robinson, Merlin
• George Murphy, Thirty-five Sonnets
• Alan Seeger, Poems
• Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
• Sara Teasdale, Love Songs
• William Carlos Williams, A Book of Poems: Al Que Quiere!

  Other in English

• Nizamat Jung, Sonnets, London: Erskine Macdonald; Indian, Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom
• Sarojini Naidu, The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, London; India, Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom
• E. J. Pratt, Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private. Canada.

  Works published in other languages

France">French poetry">France

• Guillaume Apollinaire, pen name of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, Vitam impendere amori
• Max Jacob, Le cornet a dés
• Philippe Soupault, Aquarium
• Paul Valéry, La Jeune Parque

  Indian">Indian poetry">Indian subcontinent

• Balawantrai Thakore, Bhanakar, Gujarati language
• Ci. Subrahamaniya Bharati, Kannan Pattu, Tamil language
• C. R. Sahasrabuddha, Kakaduta, a parody, Sanskrit language
• Daulat Ram, Raja Gopi Cand, long narrative poem in the traditional genre of "Kissa", about the legend of Raja Gopi Chand, Punjabi language
• Duvvuri Rami Reddi, Nalajaramma agnipravesamu, Telugu language
• Hiteshwar Bar Barua, Desdimona Kavya, narrative poem inspired by Shakespeare's ' 'Othello' ', Assamese language
• Hiteshwar Barua, Angila, Assamese language
• Vallathol Narayana Menon, also known simply as "Vallathol", Sahityamanjari, Part I, Malayalam language

  Other

• Artur Adson, Henge palango, Estonia
• Gottfried Benn, Fleisch, Germany
• Albert Ehrenstein, Die rote Zeit, Germany
• Walter Flex, Im Felde zwischen Nacht und Tag, Germany
• Stefan George, Der Krieg ; German
• Ulric-L. Gingras, La chanson du paysans; French language;, Canada
• Juan Ramón Jiménez, Diario de un poeta recién casado, Spain
• Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla, enlarged edition ; Spain
• Julio Molina Núñez and Juan Agustín Araya. Selva lírica, preparada, anthology, including work by Gabriela Mistral; Chile
• Giuseppe Ungaretti, Il porto sepolto, Italy
• Henrik Visnapuu, Amores, Estonia

  Births

• March 1 - Robert Lowell, American poet
• March 17 - Takis Sinopoulos, Greek poet
• April 19 - Johannes Bobrowski, German poet, narrative writer, adaptor and essayist
• June 7 - Gwendolyn Brooks, African American poet
• June 30 - Judson Crews, American poet
• July 5 - Stella Sierra, Panamanian poet
• July 15 - Robert Conquest, English-born historian and poet
• August 9 - Jao Tsung-I, Chinese scholar, poet, translator, calligrapher and painter
• October 12 - James McAuley, Australian poet
• December 9 - James Jesus Angleton, American counterintelligence agent and poet
• December 14 - Tove Ditlevsen, Danish poet and fiction writer
• December 30 - Yun Dong-ju, Korean poet
• Also:
• * Rainer Brambach, German poet
• * Abdus Sattar Ranjoor Kashmiri, Indian, Kashmiri-language poet
• * Kamakshi Prasad Chattopadhyay, Indian, Bengali-language poet and fiction writer
• * P. N. Pushp, Indian, Kashmiri-language scholar and poet
• * Mario Augusto Rodriguez Velez, Panamanian journalist, essayist, dramatist, poet and storyteller
• * Sampath, pen name of Raghavacharya Sankhavaram, Indian, Telugu poet
• * Themis, Indian poet of the Aurobindoean School
• * Fadwa Tuqan, Palestinian poet

  Deaths

• April 20? - Jane Barlow, 60, Irish poet and novelist
• May 25 - Maksim Bahdanovič, 25, Belarusian poet, journalist and literary critic, of tuberculosis
• May 29 - Kate Harrington, 85, American teacher, writer and poet
• Also:
• * Madhavanuj, pen name of Kashinath Hari Modak, Indian, Marathi-language poet and translator; a physician
• * Ismail Merathi, Indian

  Killed in World War I

• April 3 - Arthur Graeme West, English war poet and prose writer, shot by a sniper near Bapaume
• April 9
• * Edward Thomas, British poet and prose writer, killed in action during the Battle of Arras, soon after his arrival in France
• * R. E. Vernède, English war poet, died after being wounded by machine gun fire while leading an advance at Havrincourt
• July 31 - both killed in the Battle of Passchendaele near Ypres, Belgium
• * Francis Ledwidge, Irish war poet, "poet of the blackbirds"
• * Hedd Wyn, Welsh-language poet, killed while serving with 15th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers at Pilckem Ridge
• September 17 - Arthur Sidgwick, English poet and essayist, died of wounds from aerial bomb near Ypres
• September 28 - T. E. Hulme, influential English poetry critic, killed by a shell at Oostduinkerke in Flanders Fields
• October 16 - Walter Flex, German war writer, died of wounds in Estonia
• November 23 - Ewart Alan Mackintosh, Scottish war poet, killed in the Battle of Cambrai

  Awards and honors

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, a Danish poet and novelist, shares the award with fellow Dane Henrik Pontoppidan