Pope's war poetry was originally published in The Daily Mail; it encouraged enlistment and the handing of a white feather to youths who would not join the colours. Nowadays, this poetry is considered to be jingoistic,[8][9] consisting of simple rhythms and rhyme schemes, with extensive use of rhetorical questions to persuade (and often pressure) young men to join the war. This extract from Who's for the Game? is typical in style:
Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,The red crashing game of a fight?Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?
Other poems, such as The Call (1915)[10] – "Who’s for the trench – Are you, my laddie?" – expressed similar sentiments. Pope was widely published during the war, apart from newspaper publication producing three volumes: Jessie Pope's War Poems (1915), More War Poems (1915) and Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times (1916).[11]
Criticism
Her treatment of the subject is markedly in stark contrast to the anti-war stance of soldier poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Many of these men found her work distasteful, Owen in particular. His poem Dulce et Decorum Est was a direct response to her writing, originally dedicated "To Jessie Pope etc.". A later draft amended this as "To a certain Poetess", later being removed completely to turn the poem into a general reproach on anyone sympathetic to the war.[12]
Pope is prominently remembered first for her pro-war poetry, but also as a representative of homefront female propagandists such as Mrs Humphry Ward, May Wedderburn Cannan, Emma Orczy, and entertainers such as Vesta Tilley.[13] In particular, the poem "War Girls", similar in structure to her pro-war poetry, states how "No longer caged and penned up/They're going to keep their end up/Until the khaki soldier boys come marching back". Though largely unknown at the time, the War poets like Nichols, Sassoon and Owen, as well as later writers such as Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, and Richard Aldington, have come to define the experience of the First World War.[14]
Reappraisal
Pope's work is today often presented in schools and anthologies as a counterpoint to the work of the War Poets, a comparison by which her pro-war work suffers both technically and politically. Some writers have attempted a partial re-appraisal of her work as an early pioneer of English women in the workforce, while still critical of both the content and artistic merit of her war poetry. Reminded that Pope was primarily a humourist and writer of light verse, her success in publishing and journalism during the pre-war era, when she was described as the "foremost woman humourist" of her day has been overshadowed by her propagandistic war poems. Her verse has been mined for sympathetic portrayals of the poor and powerless, of women urged to be strong and self-reliant.[15][16] Her portrayal of the Suffragettes in a pair of counterpointed 1909 poems makes a case both for and against their actions.[17]
