Friends,
Today was a red letter day of sorts. When I got home from work, I found that I had three new books waiting for me. All of them are somewhat massive tomes. I covered all of the literary bases, I think. One is a novel about Irish immigration, one is a non-fiction book about the Battle of Britain, and the last one contains the complete works of the poet Randall Jarrell.
For those of you not familiar with Jarrell's work, he is best know for writing the short poem Death of the Ball Turret Gunner which deals with the untimely demise of a ball turret gunner on a B-17 during World War Two. That is the one normally included in high school literature textbooks.....at least it was back when the kids still had to read! However, my favorite poem of his, also about World War Two, deals with a bomber pilot. Jarrell wrote "In our bombers named for girls/We burned the cities we had read about in school." To me, there is no finer piece of writing to sum up the Air War during World War Two.
So what does that have to do with the Civil War? Simple. Have you come across a particularly good poem that sums up the experiences of the Civil War? It could be written by a participant or a more modern person. Maybe you wrote it! If so, I'd love to get some ideas for Civil War poems to check out.
My name is Lee Hutch and I am a Civil War Addict who doesn't know poo from a shovel when it comes to poetry.
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