John Allan Wyeth (poet)

John Allan Wyeth (October 24, 1894 – May 11, 1981) served as a lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I and subsequently became a war poet, composer, and painter. After the Armistice, Wyeth lived in Europe and became both a Post-Impressionist painter and a war poet. He was named for his father, the Confederate veteran and surgeon John Allan Wyeth.

According to literary critic Dana Gioia, who wrote the introduction to the 2008 reissue of Wyeth's war sonnets, Wyeth is the only American poet of the Great War who merits comparison to British war poets Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen.

Quotes

• Light enough now to watch the trees go by—
  a sleep like sickness in the rattling train.
  Men's bodies joggle on the opposite seat
  and tired greasy faces half awake
  stir restlessly and breathe a stagnant sigh.
  The stale air thickens on the grimy pane
  reeking of musty smoke and woolly feet.
  Versailles—a bridge of shadow on a lake
  dawn-blue and pale, the color of the sky.
  Paris at last!—and a great joy like pain
  in my heart. We scuffle down the corridor.
  "Lieutenant."
                          "Sir."
                                      "In half an hour we meet
  at another station—your orders are to take
  these men by subway to the Gare du Nord."
  • "On to Paris" in This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets (1928), p. 8

About

• At long last, marking the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice, an American poet takes his place in the front rank of the War Poet's parade.
  • Jon Stallworthy, in response to the republication of This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets (University of South Carolina Press, 2008); quoted by Dana Gioia in "John Allan Wyeth: Soldier Poet", St Austin Review (March–April 2020), p. 5