StephenT

• Last seen on Apr 23 1:43 AM 2008. Member since April 22, 2008.
• I am a 59 year old person
• I have 1 comment

Guest Book

Comments

• on Army Of Northern Virginia by Stephen Vincent Benet, on April 22, 2008

  Army of Northern Virginia

  I want to respond to the three previous posts and add some additional observations of my own about the poem's style and substance.
  
  To Charley: I agree entirely that this is a complex poem. (By the date of your post, I infer that you are primarily responding to Patrick's reading.) As you seem to enjoy the subtlety of this long poem, may I suggest another? Wallace Stevens' "Examination of the Hero in a Time of War" was written during World War II and uses rich imagery drawing upon the entire history of warfare and touches upon some of the themes in AoNV. Stevens was certainly familiar with Benet, and there are clear allusions to this piece (e.g., the canto about "the marbles of Xenophon").
  
  To Patrick: Perhaps you approached the poem with the sense that it SHOULD provide "historical truth of common sense" and so were led into dismissing it as "military romanticism." As a cavalry re-enacter (which I infer from your tag), it is indeed absurd that ghostly horses might "ride a printless course along the grass." I am well enough read in military history that if I wanted "historical truth or common sense", I would know where to look for it--perhaps in the voluminous Official Records, or the West Point Atlas, or in dozens of well-researched battle narratives, campaign analyses, or "picklock biographies." What I read poetry for is delight in distilled language and HUMAN truth. (To me, your approach to this poem seems like reading Sassoon to learn about the military history of The Somme.) Perhaps your resistance stems from the poem's title, that it is somehow about "their" army. I hope you will give it another try and enjoy the richness and imagination of the language: "a magic lemon deep in his saddlebags."
  
  To the Anonymous poster of 2005: I agree that there is striking mood in this piece; I think that it one of the strongest aspects of it. I believe that an emotional response is partly why we read poetry in the first place. I am seldom moved to open tears, but I've read poetry that has broken my heart in its beauty. Nevertheless, I think you have missed the deeper currents in this piece. You seem to have read the poem as a pean to 'our' Army, to 'our' leaders--at least that is strongly suggested by you last sentence. [By was of clarification, my forebears were Unionists.] I think that is far too limiting a perspective. To me, Benet's piece TRANSCENDS the war's sectional divisions altogether; that is precisely what--to me--makes it so rich. At it's deepest core, the poem is not "about" the Civil War at all. And that will provide a good segue to....
  
  My observations:
  
  I will keep these brief. My purpose is to provide other readers with a "point of entry" into the poem, rather than an analysis of how Benet achieves his effect. {Discovering for yourself is the most fun of all! (And, to play with the idea a bit, self discovery is one poetry's purposes.)] So here are several large-canvas observations:
  
  (1) Stylistically, this piece is a distant descendant of The Iliad and The Odyssey. It flows from the heroic epics of Homeric tradition. The cavalcade of generals in the opening part of the poem suggests the Iliad's catalogue of heros on the plains of Troy.
  
  (2) In the poem's structure, Jackson serves as a transition, to lead the reader smoothly to Lee, and sets up the concluding portion of the poem.
  
  (3) The part of the poem "about" Lee is the core theme, the deep current of the piece. On one level, it is, of course, about the "historical man." But it asks questions that apply to any Great Man frozen in photographs or encased in marble, bronze, and myth. It probes for the enigmatic human life and human heart of that flesh-and-blood person, as unknowable in Greatness as all men are unknowable...except to themselves. And, so it seems to me at least, the poem also invites the reader to examine the secret life and heart that only he or she can know. The questions near the end of the poem are for you.