This Man’s Army is essentially a narrative poem told in isolated
lyric moments.

John Allan Wyeth is the missing figure in the American
literature of World War I—a soldier poet still worth reading.
Little known in his own lifetime, he has been utterly forgotten by
posterity. Even scholars and historians of the period don’t recog-
nize his name. Yet his work remains fresh and compelling eighty
years after its publication. A graduate of Princeton and an
acquaintance of Edmund Wilson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wyeth is
an elusive, even mysterious character. Much of his adult life
remains obscure. He left a surprisingly small paper trail for a
writer who lived for nearly nine decades. His literary legacy
consists of a single volume, This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd
Sonnets (1928). An innovative sonnet sequence that combines
traditional and Modernist techniques, the book provides a vivid
and historically accurate account of an American soldier’s experi-
ence in the Great War. Most sonnet sequences bog down under
the weight of their own formal machinery. This Man’s Army moves
with such steady assurance of style and purpose that it never loses
either narrative flow or lyric impulse. A unique and original
book, This Man’s Army deserves a small but meaningful place in
American literary history.
John Allan Wyeth, Jr., was born in New York City on October
24, 1894, the third and last child of Florence Nightingale Sims
and John Allan Wyeth, Sr. The poet’s father was a noted surgeon
with a remarkable career that deeply influenced his namesake.
Born in Alabama in 1845, the elder Wyeth served in the Confed-
erate cavalry during the Civil War.