(Book Cover from Titlewave)
Bibliography
Lewis, J P. The Brothers' War: Civil War Voices in Verse. Washington, D.C: National Geographic, 2007. ISBN 9781426300363
Review
620, 000 people died during the worst war on American soil. Almost 400 people died every day from 1861-1865. Lewis’ book The Brothers’ War captures the war as seen through the eyes of soldiers from both sides: runaway slave, general, father, young soldiers. Lewis writes his poems in a variety of forms including free verse, sonnet, and more. Heavy with imagery, the reader can hear, see, and feel the horrors of a hopeless battle … “Hobart Funderbruck, nineteen, three months married,/ one month lost, screaming in another world,/felt in his stomach the welcome ice of bayonet”… and the despair of the imminent war… “Let all the hired guns of hate/Punish this old John Brown./The dam they opened up will flood/With blood until they drown.”
Offering a personal perspective, the eleven mostly fiction poems are created from primary source books and articles and each poem is paired with a full page black and white photograph from the Library of Congress. Historical background passages are included in small print on each spread providing the reader with a frame of reference for each photograph and poem. The grainy photos evoke immediate emotions of amazement or shock…a slave family, dead bodies on a battlefield, hope-filled young soldiers, an infirmary, a slave’s scarred back, a soldier who has had both arms amputated. The book includes a timeline of events from the Civil War, author’s notes on each poem, photography notes, and a bibliography sampler of books “for the Civil War beginner.”
Honors
- Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People
Starred reviews in: Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, VOYA
Reviewed in Booklist, Horn Book, Library Media Connection, Wilson’s Children and Junior High School
Reviewed in Booklist, Horn Book, Library Media Connection, Wilson’s Children and Junior High School
Sample poem
Passing in Review
The tortured howls,
The wretched noise,
The lives it dooms or redeploys…
A civil war breaks men from boys.
Surprise attacks—
Again, again!
Such eerie stillness now and then
Is when a war churns boys to men.
Remember them
Today, deceased,
Young men-at-arms who would increase
By inches some foothold on peace.
Salute the boys
You never knew
For valor. It’s long overdue.
Young men still passing in review
Do not require
A great parade,
A big brass band or cavalcade
To sing the sacrifice they made.
Connections
Watch excerpts from “The Civil War” by Ken Burns on PBS DVD.
Burns, Ken, Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, David G. McCullough, Colleen Dewhurst, Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Jason Robards, Sam Waterston, Hoyt Axton, and Bruce Shaw. The Civil War. Burbank, CA: PBS Home Video, 2004
To help students better understand the issues surrounding the civil war, have students write a few poems from the points of view of a northerner, southerner, military leader, slave regarding certain key events such as the Compromise of 1850, Fugitive Slave Act, Dred Scott Decision, John Brown’s Attack on Harper’s Ferry, and Secession of South Carolina.
In the author’s notes on pg. 30, Patrick encourages the reader to try to write a poem from another point of view using any style or form that gives voice to the person. Then, write another poem about the same incident but from a different person’s point of view. Patrick states that “every event can be seen through multiple prisms.” (p. 30)
Follow-up activities for older readers:
Encourage students to read the 2007 Pulitzer prize winning book Native Guard by Natasha D. Trethewey which is a compilation of poetry about the South and the first black regiment that served during the Civil War.
Trethewey, Natasha D. Native Guard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.
