In June 1918 Owen was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for publication. In the ‘Preface’ to the book he wrote:
‘This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.’