IN PARENTHESIS (POETRY) (PB)

David Jones (1895-1974) was born in Kent. In 1915, then an art student, he went to war with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, where he fought in the battles of the Somme and Ypres as an infantryman. In Parenthesis, based on Jones's experiences in World War I, was published in 1937. Fusing poetry and prose, gutter talk and high music, wartime terror and ancient myth, Jones, presents a picture at once panoramic and intimate of a world of interminable waiting and unforeseen death. And yet throughout he remains alert to the flashes of humanity that light up the wasteland of war.