Civil War Haiku: short poems on the American Civil War

Seventeen syllables is not much room for a war that lasted four years and killed more Americans than every other American war combined. That is the point. A haiku cannot summarise the American Civil War, so it stops trying, and holds one thing instead: standing corn in September, a hat filling with rain, a stone wall nobody reached.

Almost every poem here was written for this collection; the few quoted from published books are marked and their authors named. Every image behind a poem is sourced to a date, a place or a ration, and the source is named on the page that carries it.

1Where to begin

Six ways in

Civil war haiku poems The main gathering: Twenty poems arranged by ground rather than by date: enlistment and camp, the field, hospital and prison, after. Each one carries a short note saying which fact it rests on. Start here if you came for the poems and not for the argument.
The form, explained Read before writing: Why the schoolroom count of five, seven, five is a rough translation rather than a rule, what a season word does, and how a haiku differs from a senryu or a tanka. the count, the season word, the cut
Haiku poems about Gettysburg 01 to 03/07/1863: Three days, three sets of images: ripe wheat and heat on the first day, boulders and a wheatfield on the second, a mile of open ground on the third. Written to be read in the order the fighting happened.
A Fredericksburg battle poem 11 to 15/12/1862: Winter, a stone wall, a sunken road, and the aurora that soldiers of both armies reported seeing on the night of 14/12/1862. The hardest ground in the collection to write about without raising the voice.
Civil war soldier life poems Camp, march, ration: Most of a soldier's war was not battle. It was coffee, hardtack, mud, mail call, boredom and disease, which killed roughly twice as many men as combat did. The poems follow the ordinary day.
Civil war poetry examples for students Classroom sequence: A five step lesson, twelve prompts tied to real detail, six worked student level examples, and the four ways a Civil War haiku usually fails in a classroom.

2Five poems

One from each part of the war

courthouse steps in April
a boy signs his name twice
to get it right
Written for this collection. Ground: volunteer enlistment, spring 1861.

September cornfield
the rows still standing
where no one is
Written for this collection. Ground: Antietam, 17/09/1862.

cold ground, red sky
both armies looking up
at the same lights
Written for this collection. Ground: the aurora reported at Fredericksburg, 14/12/1862.

ripe wheat in July
a hat left in the furrow
brim full of rain
Written for this collection. Ground: Gettysburg and the rain of 04/07/1863.

stacked rifles, apple bloom
the road home longer
than the road out
Written for this collection. Ground: the surrender at Appomattox Court House, 09/04/1865.

3Ground the poems keep returning to

Eight fixed points

A short poem needs a place it can stand on. These eight are the ones this collection uses most often, with the images that survive in the letters and reports written at the time.

A quiet American Civil War battlefield in summer: a wide field of ripe wheat and grass under a hazy sky, a split rail fence along the far edge, and a low weathered stone marker standing alone in the foreground. — Preserved battlefield ground in high summer. Most of the places named in this collection look like this now: a field, a fence line, a marker, and nothing else to tell you.

Battles and events, with the images that recur in soldiers' accounts
Battle or event	Dates	Casualties, both sides	Images that recur
Fort Sumter	12 to 13/04/1861	No deaths in the bombardment	Brick casemates, harbour fog, a flag taken down
First Manassas, or Bull Run	21/07/1861	About 4,700	Dust, a stone bridge, civilian carriages
Shiloh	06 to 07/04/1862	About 23,700	Peach blossom, a pond, night rain
Antietam	17/09/1862	About 22,700 in one day	Standing corn, a sunken lane, a stone bridge
Fredericksburg	11 to 15/12/1862	About 17,900	A stone wall, frozen mud, the northern lights
Gettysburg	01 to 03/07/1863	About 51,000	Ripe wheat, boulders, a low stone angle
Vicksburg, siege	18/05 to 04/07/1863	About 4,800 in the assaults	Caves cut in a bluff, river fog, July heat
Appomattox Court House	09/04/1865	Surrender, no general engagement	Stacked arms, apple trees, spring mud

Wide table: scroll sideways to read it all.

Casualty figures count killed, wounded, captured and missing together. Sources differ, sometimes by thousands. The round numbers above are the ones most often cited by the National Park Service and by standard one volume histories.

4What counts as a Civil War haiku here

Five tests

A poem gets into this collection when it passes all five of these. They are house tests, not laws of the form, and they exist mainly to keep the writing honest.

One image, held. The poem shows a single thing long enough for the reader to see it. Two images are allowed only if the second one cuts against the first.
A season the calendar can carry. The war has a diary. If a poem says frost, it must be a month when there was frost.
A fact underneath. A ration, a place name, a weather report, a date. Something a reader could go and check.
No verdict. The poem does not tell the reader what to feel about the war. It gives the reader something to feel it with.
Nothing dressed up as a record. No poem here pretends to be a soldier's own verse, or a line from a real letter.

House rule on attribution

Poems written for this collection are marked as such under every one of them.
Poems quoted from published books are marked separately and their author is named.
Quotations from soldiers, officials and reporters are dated and attributed in the running text.