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After The Lost War: A Narrative
Andrew Hudgins imagines himself in the life of a now largely forgotten poet, Sidney Lanier, who served as a soldier for the Confederacy.
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1988
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About the author
Andrew Hudgins
34 books14 followersANDREW HUDGINS is the author of seven books of poems, including Saints and Strangers, The Glass Hammer, and most recently Ecstatic in the Poison. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He currently teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 22, 2015
Beautiful, thoughtful poems telling the life story of Georgia poet, Sidney Lanier. I'm of an age when he was "The Georgia poet", when we had to memorize bits of Marshes of Glynn in school. So perhaps my connection to the subject influences high rating but these individual poems do manage to string together the story of his life, while still able to stand on their own. Lanier was a very young soldier in the Civil War, scarred by that he returned home, married, had a family while trying to make a living as a musician and author. Most poignant poems in the narrative are "Reapproachment with Death" and "Glyphs" about his struggle with tuberculosis.
January 25, 2009
I'm somewhat torn on this. There is indeed some beautiful and often heartbreaking writing, but there were, at times, intrusions of a modern voice that seemed at odds with the chosen narrative vehicle. Since this collection involves a specific historic figure and time, to some extent the poet should be boxed in. In no way does this need to be limiting, but I just think that once you've chosen the stage, you need to honor it.
August 13, 2018
Powerful and lyric. The emotion of war and the emotion of life. A review for an excellent book is more difficult to write than a review for a bad or mediocre book so I'll keep this short since the five stars already tells you that the quality of the writing is superb, and since you can find a synopsis elsewhere. As in every life there are moments of laughter, re-telling of old jokes, honest love, as well as the peculiar experiences of a life that remain unforgettable. And terrifying vignettes. Flaming birds streaking through the night sky of memory and prescience.
January 22, 2008
Andrew Hudgins, After the Lost War: A Narrative (Houghton Mifflin, 1988)
I read Hudgins' collection The Never-Ending a few months back, and after I had finished praising it, a friend of mine told me that I had to read After the Lost War as soon as possible. Well, I just finished it.
Houghton Mifflin bought centuries off the time they will spend in purgatory for all those dry-as-dust textbooks with this collection. Hudgins based this series of poems loosely on the life of Civil War veteran, novelist, and flautist Sidney Lanier, but really, the subject matter could have been anything from primordial ooze to particle physics. The greatness of the work here is in the construction of the poetry itself. The entire book is in blank verse, but a sort of sprung blank verse (through not as loose as the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins) that rhymes every once in a while. Nonrhyming poetry that rhymes every once in a while is one of the great no-nos of poetry; it speaks to a lack of attention paid to the details of craft. Before free verse became so popular, it was also not advisable to write in, say, iambic tetrameter and then suddenly throw in a line of iambic pentameter. Hudgins does both of these things, seemingly at will, and even the most astute reader will likely skim right by them without even noticing there's been a rhyme, or a break in the rhythm.
Hudgins, in these poems, is so completely attuned to the beauty of the language he's using and the natural flow of the words that the anomalies within them take on, at best, minimal significance. Hudgins manages to do a number of things that, these days, seem nearly impossible: breaks the rules of both free-verse and metric poetry, complete an epic-length series (144 pages) of related poems and keep them readable, and manage the whole way not to drop a single syllable, not include a single throwaway word. I only have a thousand words for this review, and a thousand words is not nearly enough to describe the beautiful intricacies of the construction here, the many parallels that run through the book and the way the lengths of the poems expand and contract depending on what's going on in Hudgins' life; someone, someday soon, will use this book to write a critical thesis. It will be very long.
Upon the release of After the Lost War, one reviewer in the Denver Post called it "one of the best narrative poems to appear in this country in more than thirty years." Indeed. Easily one of the finest books, in any genre, I have read this year. **** ½
I read Hudgins' collection The Never-Ending a few months back, and after I had finished praising it, a friend of mine told me that I had to read After the Lost War as soon as possible. Well, I just finished it.
Houghton Mifflin bought centuries off the time they will spend in purgatory for all those dry-as-dust textbooks with this collection. Hudgins based this series of poems loosely on the life of Civil War veteran, novelist, and flautist Sidney Lanier, but really, the subject matter could have been anything from primordial ooze to particle physics. The greatness of the work here is in the construction of the poetry itself. The entire book is in blank verse, but a sort of sprung blank verse (through not as loose as the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins) that rhymes every once in a while. Nonrhyming poetry that rhymes every once in a while is one of the great no-nos of poetry; it speaks to a lack of attention paid to the details of craft. Before free verse became so popular, it was also not advisable to write in, say, iambic tetrameter and then suddenly throw in a line of iambic pentameter. Hudgins does both of these things, seemingly at will, and even the most astute reader will likely skim right by them without even noticing there's been a rhyme, or a break in the rhythm.
Hudgins, in these poems, is so completely attuned to the beauty of the language he's using and the natural flow of the words that the anomalies within them take on, at best, minimal significance. Hudgins manages to do a number of things that, these days, seem nearly impossible: breaks the rules of both free-verse and metric poetry, complete an epic-length series (144 pages) of related poems and keep them readable, and manage the whole way not to drop a single syllable, not include a single throwaway word. I only have a thousand words for this review, and a thousand words is not nearly enough to describe the beautiful intricacies of the construction here, the many parallels that run through the book and the way the lengths of the poems expand and contract depending on what's going on in Hudgins' life; someone, someday soon, will use this book to write a critical thesis. It will be very long.
Upon the release of After the Lost War, one reviewer in the Denver Post called it "one of the best narrative poems to appear in this country in more than thirty years." Indeed. Easily one of the finest books, in any genre, I have read this year. **** ½
May 5, 2018
A deeply imagined portrait of poet/musician/Confederate soldier Sidney Lanier, a horror story but not an apology. Nothing of the glorious lost cause here.
From “After the Wilderness, May 3, 1863” {Sid has been walking the battlefield all night, looking for his brother):”
I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that—
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live.
Cliff knew it couldn’t without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a started cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,”
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field.
. . .
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons.
This poem, in all its parts, is one of the most chilling descriptions I’ve read of the aftermath of battle and the madness war instills in human beings.
From “After the Wilderness, May 3, 1863” {Sid has been walking the battlefield all night, looking for his brother):”
I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that—
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live.
Cliff knew it couldn’t without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a started cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,”
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field.
. . .
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons.
This poem, in all its parts, is one of the most chilling descriptions I’ve read of the aftermath of battle and the madness war instills in human beings.
November 13, 2009
Beautiful poems in the voice of Georgia-born poet and musician of the Civil War Sydney Lanier.
August 16, 2015
Really enjoyed this. Some memorable lines.
February 8, 2016
Beauty? Et Tu Beauty? I loved this narrative poem. I don't have much to say. Read it. It is glorious.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews