Aesthetic Realism Online Library Poetry by Eli Siegel

...From the Commentary by Ellen Reiss in issue Number 803 of The Right Of—
about two Civil War poems by Eli Siegel

The following poems are about the Civil War; which, Eli Siegel showed, contrary to some historians, was fought over one thing: slavery. Slavery was behind the so-called economic causes of the war and the insistence on "states' rights."  Mr. Siegel was passionate in saying that what the South nostalgically called "the lost cause" was the horrible ability to own black human beings. And when one sees how much America tried not to make the decision that slavery had to end, and how the years of compromising on the subject—the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act—culminated with the Civil War, one sees that ethics cannot be compromised with or put aside.  The ethics "waiting and charging" in 1863 was about—in Eli Siegel's kind words—"what does a person deserve by being alive?" The same ethics is insisting now.

     Eli Siegel tells of this, first in free verse lines about a soldier, whose depths he is so fair to; then in eight rhymed lines about four battles of the Civil War. In both poems, so different, the music is beautiful: a oneness of the definite, the insisting, and the delicate, lingering, deep—both of which are justice. With thorough beauty, Eli Siegel gave and made learnable the justice America is asking for.


 

The Waiting Maine Man, Dead at Little Round Top, Near Gettysburg, July 1863

While waiting drearily on a dark, windy, cold afternoon in 1960 in a
     post office on Christopher Street, New York,
For something I did not believe in too much,
I thought—minglingly—of how some Maine man, rather unknown,
Waited in early July 1863, at Little Round Top, near Gettysburg,    
     Pennsylvania;
Waited and died; and so changed to another kind of waiting. 
He waits, as we all do.
Waiting is so much.
Before 1863 there was waiting and since 1863 there has been waiting.
It is so necessary to know what the waiting is all about.
It may be said here that some of the Maine man’s Maine friends    
     (the man I have written of) later charged.
Waiting and perhaps charging!—so much of that was around.
1863 is still waiting, and in its way is charging: for a year charges;    
     time charges.
Little Round Top is busy.
The Maine man and his regimental friends are busy.
So often being busy looks like waiting.
We have been waiting to find out what the being busy in 1863 was about.
We are busy.
We shall find out.
Meaning, too, has been waiting and charging.
The ethics of 1863 has been insistent and will be found.
(Much of ethics-and-beauty’s power consists in the insisting on being    
     found.)
Hail, O Maine man, at Little Round Top in early July 1863; we, too,    
     like waiting and charging in behalf of the ethics that was insistent    
     then—
Even as Lee retreated, with the Maine man dead, and Lee’s army    
     quite safe, though distressfully travelling.   

Thoughts in 1960 on the Civil War, 1861-1865

Chancellorsville
Is with us still.
Manassas
Is of us.
The Wilderness
Is our distress
Antietam
Is not just for them.

 

 


From The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, no. 803
© 1988 by Aesthetic Realism Foundation
seal
Eli Siegel on Beauty | Biography | Ellen Reiss on Poetry by Eli Siegel
Multicultural Aesthetics | Countering the Lies | US Congressional Record
Home | Aesthetic Realism Foundation | Eli Siegel Collection | Definition Press Books