As I began to write the manuscript that became my historical novel Brookhaven, I knew I would use a 19th century poet as a kind of infusion into the story. three poets in particularly were closely associated with the Civil War – Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Sidney Lanier. A fourth – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – was a possibility.
Whitman is the poet today we connect to the war, but he wasn’t by the people who lived the war. Herman Melville was considered by the North to be THE poet of war during the time it raged, but he would be problematic for my novel, because it was largely set in the South. In the South, Sidney Lanier only became “the Civil War poet” years after the war, and particularly after his death in 1881, and his poems were less about the war and more about the postwar period. But to use Lanier’s poems was tempting.
In the end, I went for Longfellow, and for several reasons. He was hugely popular before the war. His oldest son enlisted and was seriously wounded. His wife died from a tragic accident during the war. And while he had been an ardent abolitionist, Longfellow was among the few who were horrified at the human devastation wrought by the war, so much so that he regretted the role he had played in advancing radical abolition.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Photograph: Poet Sidney Lanier about 1870.
Some Thursday Readings
Do you love me? – poem by Sarah Crowley Chestnt at Rabbit Room Poetry.
“The Combe,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Poet Laura: The Verdant Respite of Portugal + New Poet Laura Introduction – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Three One-Liners from Three Poets – James Sale at The Epoch Times.
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