The Conscientious Killer: Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting" Author(s): Marc D. Cyr Source: Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 58, No. 1 (SPRING 2016), pp. 108-128 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26155346 Accessed: 22-03-2020 06:36 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Texas Studies in Literature and Language This content downloaded from 54.228.195.183 on Sun, 22 Mar 2020 06:36:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Conscientious Killer: Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting" Marc D. Cyr I Wilfred Owen is the best-known war poet in English-language literature, and "Strange Meeting" is arguably not just his most famous poem, but his best. Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and mentor, and the editor of the first fairly extensive collection of Owen's poems, judged it to be his "mas terpiece" (Siegfried's Journey 59), although his personal relationship with Owen, as well as with this poem in particular, may have influenced that judgment, and there are others who not only do not see "Strange Meeting" as Owen's masterpiece, but think all or parts of it are plain bad.