American war verse
annotated poetry collections
antiwar poetic sentiment
author biography in anthologies
battlefield writing traditions
Black authors in early American poetry
border state writing
Category=DCQ
civilian wartime writing
comparative regional poetics
educational literary resources
elegiac war writing
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female war-era poets
frontier state literary voices
historical glossaries for literature
historical imagination in poetry
historical poetry anthology
home front literary voices
literary archives of war
literary commemoration of national crises
literary depictions of mourning
literary memory of national conflict
literary perspectives on wartime life
literary portrayals of battlefield death
literature and national identity
lithograph illustration traditions
New England literary history
nineteenth century literary responses to conflict
nineteenth century print culture
Northern and Southern cultural expression
patriotic verse traditions
periodical literature history
poetic accounts of political upheaval
poetic form and rhetoric in wartime
poetic journalism
poetic meditations on loss
poetic representations of national trauma
race and literature in the nineteenth century
reflections on mortality in literature
regional literary cultures
soldier authored poetry
Southern literary traditions
timelines in historical publications
verse as cultural documentation
verse in popular magazines
verse responses to political assassination
visual culture in historical books
voices of ordinary American
Product details
- ISBN 9781558495098
- Weight: 609g
- Dimensions: 141 x 209mm
- Publication Date: 13 Dec 2005
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Recaptures the astonishing outpouring of poetry in response to the Civil War ""Words for the Hour"" presents a readable and illuminating account of the Civil War, told through the words of poets North and South. From bathos to profound philosophical meditation and sorrow, the range of these poems illuminates the complexity of their era while also revealing the continuing power of this turning point in American history to speak to readers in the present day. The volume is divided into three parts, each offering a different perspective on the poetry generated by the war. Part I samples the extraordinary range of poems written immediately preceding and during the war and published in popular periodicals, providing a kind of poetic newspaper account as one might have read it then - from the early days of optimistically heralded victory on both sides, through the mounting casualties and brutal deaths of the long middle years, to the war's conclusion and President Lincoln's assassination. Viewing the struggle from many different vantage points gives the reader access to the ways that people from various backgrounds experienced the trajectory of the war. Civilians and soldiers, free blacks and proponents of slavery, women and men from Massachusetts and Virginia and from recently admitted states and barely developed territories, writers with their eyes on the national political stage and those focused on personal domestic issues: these are the multiple voices of America responding to the war. Part II includes substantial selections of poems by writers who published extensively in response to the conflict, providing more complex and comprehensive perceptions of the war. These poets include not just well-known figures such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and John Greenleaf Whittier, but also African American poets George Moses Horton and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Southern poets Henry Timrod and Sarah Piatt. Part III offers poems by two poets who did not publish during their lifetimes, but had strong imaginative responses to the conflict, thus giving a sense of the long reach of the war as a defining national experience. One of these two poets (Emily Dickinson) is now renowned while the other (Obadiah Ethelbert Baker) is first published in this volume. ""Words for the Hour"" is indeed ""new"" among anthologies of Civil War poetry not only in its wide range of poems by popular, anonymous, and now canonical poets but also in its informational apparatus. A historical timeline listing major battles and events of the war begins the volume, and historical photographs or lithographs introduce each section of poems. The book also includes a substantial introduction, a glossary of important names and terminology relevant to understanding the poems, and biographical sketches for all the poets whose work is included.
FAITH BARRETT is assistant professor of English at Lawrence University. CRISTANNE MILLER is W. M. Keck Distinguished Professor of English at Pomona College.
