God created war so that Americans would learn geography — Mark Twain. War Is merely the continuation of policy by other means — Carl von Clausewitz. Twain’s quote reminds us al that at many times America is insular and inward looking, even during its past century as the World’s policeman. Von Clausewitz is undoubtedly truer. On certain issues when all other options have failed the argument must be continued until one side prevails. For the United States that first test as a separate nation was undoubtedly the Civil War which shredded the Nation’s youth and provoked enormous change much of which continued for decades after. Here we look at the conflict through the eyes of poets. Not just the famed but poets who observed it first hand, who felt its fire and its compulsion to wreck and reveal sides of human nature that challenge us in many ways. Words can be our greatest weapons and our greatest healers.
