my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell

Gwendolyn Brooks's sonnet is a part of a larger context of poems that focus on the horrors of war and subvert the glorification of battle. Many famous poems counter the romanticization of war and, thus, share a context with “my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell.”

Siegfried Sassoon fought in World War I and wrote poems about its hellish qualities. In “They” (1917), a bishop tells the soldiers they’ve fought for a “just cause,” but the soldiers, like the speaker in Brooks’s poem, are unsure. The soldiers in Sassoon’s poem tell the bishop they’re not the same and list the injuries they’ve suffered—including the loss of legs. In Sassoon’s poem, the worries expressed by Brooks’s speaker come true, as the soldiers aren’t so pure and loving anymore, and their bodies aren't intact.

Another World War I poet is Wilfred Owen. His poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1920) also uses hell to symbolize combat. Both Brooks and Owen include the devil, with Owen comparing a face to “a devil sick of sin.” A few years before World War II broke out, Dylan Thomas published “The Hand That Signed the Paper” (1935), which links to the insensible, unspeakable elements of war addressed in Brooks’s poem.