I don't think Elijah is the reference here though - his raven was a symbol of hope and rescue sent by God. Perhaps Noah's raven which fails to find dry land. More generally ravens were associated with feeding on the dead of battlefields.
Yes, true. I think I probably had the prophet too much on the brain after the previous day's poem. And yes, its carrion-feeding is the most obvious connection. I think the Hudgins poem, with its desert reference, is probably what called the Elijah allusion back to mind (though again, it was lingering from the Longfellow poem of the day before), but you're right that that's probably not the predominant association in the Lanier poem.
Whether from the Civil War period, the trenches of World War I, the gulags of the Soviet Union, or the death camps of the Germans or Japanese in World War II, and the list goes on, the loss of what was once a thriving life, community, ethos, and perhaps in some cases a way of life, just vanishes. It, no more than a loved one, from a funeral, can be revived. Still it's memory permeates one, for good or ill, like the corpse of a long dead lover, only this one still has the bare bones of its outline, and is still peopled, though only some may remember what was there before. The melody is over but the memory lingers on.
Surprisingly, because I don't read much contemporary poetry, I've read After the Lost War, and liked it. But knowing very little about Lanier I'm sure I missed a lot. A whole lot.
Lanier lived for a few years in Montgomery, and Montgomery tried to claim him. There was a Sidney Lanier High School whose football team was called the Poets. It didn't stop them from winning a lot. Who knows, maybe it helped. I didn't know until just now that the school was closed this year.
A really fine analysis of two interesting poems. Historically, this sense of collective weakness, along with denial of guilt, gave us the Lost Cause and the Solid South. The rest of the nation--the popular culture--mostly accepted the southern mythos. In the reconciliation of the sections the African American was surrendered to Jim Crow. ("Abandoned by the Enemy," an 1886 play by William Gillette, shows this dynamic at work.) The South did "live on carrion."
I don't think Elijah is the reference here though - his raven was a symbol of hope and rescue sent by God. Perhaps Noah's raven which fails to find dry land. More generally ravens were associated with feeding on the dead of battlefields.
Yes, true. I think I probably had the prophet too much on the brain after the previous day's poem. And yes, its carrion-feeding is the most obvious connection. I think the Hudgins poem, with its desert reference, is probably what called the Elijah allusion back to mind (though again, it was lingering from the Longfellow poem of the day before), but you're right that that's probably not the predominant association in the Lanier poem.
Whether from the Civil War period, the trenches of World War I, the gulags of the Soviet Union, or the death camps of the Germans or Japanese in World War II, and the list goes on, the loss of what was once a thriving life, community, ethos, and perhaps in some cases a way of life, just vanishes. It, no more than a loved one, from a funeral, can be revived. Still it's memory permeates one, for good or ill, like the corpse of a long dead lover, only this one still has the bare bones of its outline, and is still peopled, though only some may remember what was there before. The melody is over but the memory lingers on.
Surprisingly, because I don't read much contemporary poetry, I've read After the Lost War, and liked it. But knowing very little about Lanier I'm sure I missed a lot. A whole lot.
Lanier lived for a few years in Montgomery, and Montgomery tried to claim him. There was a Sidney Lanier High School whose football team was called the Poets. It didn't stop them from winning a lot. Who knows, maybe it helped. I didn't know until just now that the school was closed this year.
A really fine analysis of two interesting poems. Historically, this sense of collective weakness, along with denial of guilt, gave us the Lost Cause and the Solid South. The rest of the nation--the popular culture--mostly accepted the southern mythos. In the reconciliation of the sections the African American was surrendered to Jim Crow. ("Abandoned by the Enemy," an 1886 play by William Gillette, shows this dynamic at work.) The South did "live on carrion."