In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1919) is the posthumous collection of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, the Canadian soldier and poet whose iconic World War I verse immortalized the red poppy as a global symbol of remembrance. The volume centers on McCrae’s legendary 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields”—penned in twenty minutes during the Second Battle of Ypres—where crumbling trenches and blooming poppies frame a haunting plea from the fallen: “Take up our quarrel with the foe.”
Alongside this masterwork, the book gathers lesser-known but equally poignant verses like “The Anxious Dead”, all bearing McCrae’s signature blend of battlefield grit and lyrical tenderness. Published after his 1918 death from pneumonia, the collection serves as both literary testament and historical artifact, with some editions including wartime letters that reveal the compassionate physician behind the soldier-poet. More than a century later, McCrae’s words remain a sacred invocation of loss and duty, recited at memorials worldwide each November. This slim volume—part elegy, part call to arms—captures the paradoxical beauty and horror that forged one of history’s most enduring war poems.
