The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry

From the time of the conflict to the present day, the Civil War has been engraved in the collective memory of Americans, inspiring a legion of poetic sentiments from Union and Confederate soldiers, as well as from America's finest men and women poets both black and white. Nineteenth-century poets such as Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote notable works on a subject all too close to their hearts and minds; but so too have such formidable recent writers as John Updike and Derek Walcott.
Yet this rich tradition of Civil War poetry - spanning more than a century and a half - has never before been chronicled in one comprehensive volume. Collected here are the horrors of the war, the common nobility of the soldiers taking part, the moral fervor of abolition, the eerie stillness of the field after battle, and Lincoln's legacy - all recorded in verse and dramatically illustrated by photographs from the Matthew Brady Collection of the National Archives.
Artfully assembled by Richard Marius, noted novelist and historian, The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry includes the classics of the genre as well as rare period pieces by African Americans and women, and northern and southern patriotic verse and songs. Marius paints the background of the conflict and its literature in his lively introduction, and prefaces each poem with a compelling vignette. What emerges from these pages is a deep sense of the anger of the war's participants, their yearning for peace, and overall an unparalleled pageant of the war in all its power and sentimentality.
The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry is a unique anthology that collectors, gift-givers, and general readers fascinated by American lore will all appreciate. It is an eloquent, original commemoration of the American Civil War, captured in meter and light.

Richard Marius, noted historian, novelist, and essayist, is the director of expository writing and senior lecturer in English at Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including a biography of Thomas More and most recently, the novel After the War.