Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Civil War

It’s Take Your Poet to Work Day

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Today is Take Your Poet to Work Day at Tweetspeak Poetry, and the site has a raft of resources to help you do that. The celebration of poetry and work has been going strong for more than a decade, and I’ve been an enthusiastic participant from the get-go. I even wrote a small book, Poetry at Work, on finding poetry in all aspects of work.

When I still had an office (or a cubicle), I’d pick a poet and bring him or her to work on the designated day in July. Typically, I’d bring my longstanding favorite poet, T.S. Eliot.

Ten years ago, I was preparing to give notice of my intended retirement from work, which I did in September of 2014. I officially retired in May of 2015. It was early, but it was time. Enough said.

I did some freelance work for a time and was even called back to the company for a three-month assignment in 2018. But “work,” if you define it as something like an eight-hour-a-day job, was over in 2015. 

But I still work, mostly with my own writing. And I still bring my poet to work.

For the last three to four years, that poet has been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (see lower right-hand corner of photo). Longfellow has accompanied me on a writing project, serving as guide, resource, break from the pace, and sometimes even reality check. I read his works in three different editions – an 1898 “complete poems” edition by Houghton Mifflin, a 1944 edition published by Illustrated Modern Library, and a 2000 edition of his poems published by Library of America. I also used Nicholas Basbanes biography, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2020) as a resource.

As I read, researched, and wrote, Longfellow was along for the ride, so much so that, while he didn’t become a character in my story, he did become a presence and an influence on one of the principal characters. If the character recited The Courtship of Miles Standish or Poems on Slavery, I’d stand and read them aloud as well.

I was not only taking Longfellow to work, I was also putting Longfellow to work and working alongside him. I’ll have some news about the final result in some weeks, but Mr. Longfellow may be getting his due.

You don’t have to write a novel to take your poet to work. You can read a poem aloud to yourself or others. You can stick a poem on your bulletin board. You can memorize poem or recite one while you’re doing garden work. Over the years, some have gotten rather elaborate in their efforts, including doing poetry readings at work.

What I discovered was that, even simply reading a poem in the office to myself, my understanding changed because the place provided a different context. 

For resources, tips, and background on poets (including ones you can color like Longfellow), head on over to Tweetspeak Poetry and take your poet to work.

Top photograph: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in old age.

Remembering the Journey

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A Brookhaven Short Story

When he looked back on that time, he could see the first days were the easiest, if also the most frightening. And more dangerous days were to follow.

Like hundreds and thousands of others, he walked home from the war, home from defeat and surrender. Glory was long gone, erased in places with names like The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, and Appomattox.

The road he took began in Virginia. It ended more than 900 miles later in Mississippi, and home. The camaraderie he’d experienced with others walking home disappeared three days into the journey, when he discovered he’d been left behind. Alone, he walked the often-deserted roads, asking the occasional fellow traveler the direction and the next town.

The woods he passed through were often thick, untouched since forever, he thought, dense forests of pine, oak, and elm. When he could, he traveled through trails in the woods that followed the roads. He liked the silence of the trees and undergrowth; he also liked the safety they afforded, unlike the open road.

He also liked the shift from woods to farmers’ fields, most of which were untouched because the men were gone to war. Or gone from the war.

He’d gone about a hundred miles, he reckoned, based on what other travelers told him, when the walk changed to a ride. He’d gotten a feisty stallion and a wagon drawn by two draught horses. But there had been a tradeoff. With the wagon and the horses came a freed slave woman and her two children and a dead planter’s teenaged daughter and her young cousin. He’d probably never understand why he agreed to see them southward, but he had no regrets.

By necessity, homeward progress simultaneously quickened and slowed. The horses made for faster travel; the women and children did not. He’d quickly learned that their needs were always more complicated than his own and required frequent stops. Progress had been further slowed by rain, bandits, and measles.

He’d just turned 15, a war veteran with two years’ experience. His traveling companions made for conversation, but the responsibility for the five lives terrified him. When he felt most afraid, he’d focus on the road. The woman and the girl had no inkling of his fear; they thought him moody and melancholic.

He led them through rain and flood. He protected them from the evil roaming the roads, evil that was all too common, sometimes predators preying on people just like themselves and sometimes desperate people doing desperate things. They had all seen death and destruction, often so bad that even the children stopped talking. 

But he’d seen them all safely home.

He thought he knew the reasons for their success, the reasons they’d survived. He’d trusted the good Lord to watch over them all. And he trusted his determination to do this thing, to see the journey through.

Related:

“Christmas Oranges,” a short story at Cultivating Oaks Press.

“Encounter in the Woods,” a short story.

Top photograph by Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Writing a Bibliography – for a Novel

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It’s been two weeks since I read a book about the Civil War, and it feels strange. My draft novel is done, at least for now. It’s not so much a novel about the Civil War as it is a novel of the Civil War.

If you grew up in the South, or even if you didn’t, what happened in the years 1861-1865 affected you, even when you didn’t know it. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were children of Civil War veterans. They experienced the war in very different ways, both in the fighting and in civilian life. 

My mother’s grandparents were Franco-German immigrants who settled in New Orleans and descendants of the Acadians expelled from Canada after the French and Indian War who settled in what we called “the river parishes” – the stretch of territory along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The men generally fought for the Confederacy; after 1862, the women, children, and elderly men discovered life under Union occupation. 

My father’s grandparents experienced much the same. The men fought for the Confederacy; after the fall of Vicksburg in 1863, their families in southern Mississippi lived under sometimes loose, sometimes tight federal occupation. My great-grandfather Samuel Young was the only son in the family to survive the war.

Much like World War II affected the Baby Boom generation, the Civil War affected my grandparents’ generation. A terrible and collective experience of one generation would inevitably affect their children. Louisiana had the highest per capita income in the country in 1860; it had the lowest in 1865. Family members had died in the fighting; the social order was in chaos and upheaval. What happened to my ancestors was repeated millions of times in both the South and, in a different way, the North.

My history classes in middle school, high school, and college focused on broad themes about the war – like slavery, state rights, battles, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, and the rise of the “Lost Cause.” When you write a novel rooted in the war, you discover that, while all of that is important, the broad themes don’t tell you much about how people lived, died, fought, and coped with the war. 

Vicksburg during the 1863 siege

I turned to reading and research – not only histories but also memoirs, newspaper accounts, sociological studies, photographic essays, fiction, and even poetry. I had to be selective, and so I focused on 1863 and post-war Mississippi, including Grierson’s Raid of April 1863; the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia in 1864; and the battles in April 1865 around Petersburg and Appomattox. But general histories were needed, too, and Bruce Catton’s The Army of the Potomac Trilogy and James MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom were among the readings as well.

Three books were particularly helpful: Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era by Frances Clark and Rebecca Jo Plant; Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina by Ernest Dollar; and Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline Janney. Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches and Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils were two works of fiction backed by extensive historical research, and they were both an inspiration. But everything I read helped in at least a small way.

The bibliography includes 84 books and two web sites. They represent an infinitesimally tiny portion of what’s available to read about the Civil War.

It’s awe-inspiring to read what soldiers and civilians alike experienced, including some pretty horrible things. Tragedies abounded. The devastation, especially in the South, was extensive. Soldiers on both sides committed crimes against civilians.

And yet, people coped and went on. They found strength in community and faith. What they had known was gone forever, except in memory. 

Even if the novel never sees the light of day, this has been a humbling and rewarding experience.

Top photograph by Thomas Kelley via Unsplash. Used with permission.

What Happens When You Finally Type “The End”?

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It’s been more than two years since the writing began. It’s been more than four since the research started. A little over a month ago, on Jan. 16, I wrote this in my writing journal: “Reached 87,758 words. First draft completed.” Five days later, I wrote “First reread / editing completed.”

It was there I stopped, almost mentally and emotionally spent. I need to do the second edit, which for me is the most serious one. But I stopped, to catch my breath, reflect and take stock, and consider how the past two years of my life have been devoted to a story that is about 25 percent true and 75 percent fiction. Nd what I thought was mostly true mostly wasn’t.

I’ve published five novels and a non-fiction book. I’ve completed two novel manuscripts that have potential but need considerable reworking. I have at least five different novel ideas, and a dozen short stories, buzzing around my head. 

This story I just finished, this manuscript I’ve labored over, isn’t exactly a labor of love. It’s more a labor of sweat, the story I had to get done. 

To continue reading, please see me post today at the ACFW Blog.

Top photograph by Rui Silva sj via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Across Five Aprils” by Irene Hunt

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In 1964, author Irene Hunt (1907-2001) published the middle-grade novel Across Five Aprils. It’s the coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Jethro Creighton, the youngest of five brothers and a sister. They live and work with their parents Matt and Emma on a farm in southern Illinois.

This coming-of-age story is set during the Civil War, beginning in 1861. It’s so well done, and such a good story, that it’s no wonder that it was runner-up to the Newberry Medal in 1965 (her second book, Up the Road Slowly, won the medal in 1966). In 212 pages, Hunt manages to tell both the story of the Creighton family and the story of the Civil War itself. 

Told from Jethro’s perspective, we watch what happens when the reports come of the fall of Fort Sumter. The oldest brother has not been heard from in years, having gone to California for the Gold Rush. Two brothers and the cousin who lives with the family join the Union army; Jethro’s favorite brother Bill joins the Confederate army. Jenny’s beau, the schoolteacher Jethro adores, eventually throws his lot in with the Union. 

While it is the story of the war and how his brothers fare, Across Five Aprils is also Jethro’s story and what happens back home. When Jethro is 10, his father suffers a heart attack, and the boy suddenly finds himself of being head of the family. Through Jethro’s eyes, we see the violence that happens in a region of conflicted loyalties, the impact of the war’s news on the family, and how the war meant unexpected struggles on the home front. 

The characters seem like real people. Hunt had a gift for characterization, and even the minor characters come alive on the page. Hunt based the story on the tales and letters of her own grandfather, who experienced the Civil War much as Jethro does in the novel. She also did extensive research in newspaper reports, government documents, histories, biographies, and memoirs.

Irene Hunt

Hunt, a native of Illinois, taught English and French in Illinois schools and later psychology at the University of South Dakota. She returned to Illinois to become director of language arts at a junior high school. Including Across Five Aprils, she published eight novels between 1864 and 1985, and she won several awards for children’s literature. She died on her 98th birthday in 2001.

After 60 years, Across Five Aprils has stood the test of time. It’s a riveting read as we watch, through a boy’s eyes, as the war unfold. The Creighton family will endure heartbreak and tragedy, fear and violence. But it is the family that endures. 

Top photograph: A farmer and two boys cutting hay in Kentucky during the Civil War.

“God Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers” by James McIvor

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In 1861, the first year of the Civil War, soldiers on both sides still felt some sense of momentum. Overly optimistic, many believed the war would over by Christmas. As the war stretched into 1862, the initial optimism was giving way to something else – a sense of failure and despair. And that sense affected both sides. 

The South was beginning to feel the bite of the Union blockade of Southern ports. The North was watching a series of what seemed like only Confederate victories on the battlefield. Soldiers were becoming demoralized. It didn’t help the Union’s cause that so many senior officers were “political generals” and appeared sorely lacking in experience and common sense. The sense of failure and isolation was especially acute around Christmas, when soldiers would have ordinarily been home with their families.

Using books, articles, letters (both published and unpublished), archival papers, and diaries, author James McIvor has written God Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers: A True Civil War Christmas Story. He’s provided a snapshot of what the Christmas season was like during the four years of the Civil War. His focus is the soldiers, what they thought, what they experienced, and often why they wanted to be anyplace other than where they were. The book was first published in 2006. 

Sometimes the Christmas season and holiday coincided with battles, and soldiers found themselves marching to battle when they would have preferred to be at home, or at worst sitting around a campfire and enjoying a good meal. More often, Christmas was quiet, leaving too much time to think and reflect, and miss fallen colleagues and the family at home.

He points out that the Civil War changed perceptions of the holiday. The suffering on both sides had been great, and the feelings about Christmas that had been growing for decades before the war became something much stronger with the end of the way. “The Civil War, in fact,” McIvor writes, “made Christmas a truly American holiday in a way it had never entirely been before.”

McIvor is a longtime Civil War enthusiast and freelance writer. He lives in Virginia. 

God, Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers is a poignant narrative, but it avoids sentimentalism. Soldiers who served before and after the Civil War would likely find some of their own story here.

Top illustration: Christmas Eve 1863 by Thomas Nast, the German-born Civil War cartoonist who is credited with creating the image of Santa Claus.