David Jones wrote modernist poetry and essays shaped by his experience as a soldier, his work as a visual artist and his deep engagement with myth, Catholic liturgy and British history. In Parenthesis transforms his First World War service from embarkation to the Battle of the Somme into a long work combining soldiers' speech, military detail, Welsh legend and Arthurian reference. The Anathemata moves even further from conventional narrative, layering Roman Britain, maritime history, Christian ritual and fragments of cultural memory into a dense sequence of voices and allusions. Jones's prose and poetry are demanding, highly annotated and designed to reward rereading rather than rapid comprehension. His work fits First World War literature, high modernism and mythic poetry, especially for readers of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound who are comfortable with historical and religious reference woven directly into poetic structure. Read more Less
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