Customer Reviews

After the Lost War: A Narrative

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When I was reading this volume, I drove to Sunday Mass early and sat for a few minutes in the car. I finished this book in the parking lot and never went to Mass. Normally, I would feel obliged to bring deliberating skipping Mass to confession. This time, I shall not. I immediately phoned my local bookseller and he obtained for me a signed first edition which I handed to my wife and told her it is all I want for my birthday in March. I then got on line and ordered five additional paperback copies to give to my friends. I read the book three times in 10 days. I'm not like this, normally. This is a brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed and deeply moving book. It is now part of me.

In "After the Lost War", Andrew Hudgins accomplishes the nearly impossible. As a lyric poet, he has assembled a powerful collection of poems. Each poem retains the individuality that allows it to be enjoyed alone. However, as a storyteller, Hudgins has woven these poems into a narrative, allowing the reader to experience the development of a complicated individual as he struggles with surviving the Civil War. You will not look at lyric poetry the same ever again.

This is one of the finest volumes of narrative poetry there is buy it you won't be dissapointed. Hudgins captures the soul of Sidney Lanier puts it on the page. I read this book for the first time two years ago and is still one of the best I've read. Enough so that I felt obligated to log on here and post this. On a side note I met Hudgins today, the man is brilliant, hilarious, and just a really really great guy.

A wonderful series of poems which recounts the life and times of the Civil War era through the eyes of Georgia-born poet and musician Sidney Lanier. In this work, Hudgins shows both a mastery of the written word and true grasp of the character of Sidney Lanier. Even those not well-versed in the history of the Civil War period will be unable to put this book down, as each poem weaves another part of the beautiful tapestry that is "After the Lost War." A masterpiece well-worth the reader's time

Andrew Hudgins, After the Lost War: A Narrative (Houghton Mifflin, 1988)

I read Hudgins' collection The Never-Ending a few months back, and after I had finished praising it, a friend of mine told me that I had to read After the Lost War as soon as possible. Well, I just finished it.

Houghton Mifflin bought centuries off the time they will spend in purgatory for all those dry-as-dust textbooks with this collection. Hudgins based this series of poems loosely on the life of Civil War veteran, novelist, and flautist Sidney Lanier, but really, the subject matter could have been anything from primordial ooze to particle physics. The greatness of the work here is in the construction of the poetry itself. The entire book is in blank verse, but a sort of sprung blank verse (through not as loose as the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins) that rhymes every once in a while. Nonrhyming poetry that rhymes every once in a while is one of the great no-nos of poetry; it speaks to a lack of attention paid to the details of craft. Before free verse became so popular, it was also not advisable to write in, say, iambic tetrameter and then suddenly throw in a line of iambic pentameter. Hudgins does both of these things, seemingly at will, and even the most astute reader will likely skim right by them without even noticing there's been a rhyme, or a break in the rhythm.

Hudgins, in these poems, is so completely attuned to the beauty of the language he's using and the natural flow of the words that the anomalies within them take on, at best, minimal significance. Hudgins manages to do a number of things that, these days, seem nearly impossible: breaks the rules of both free-verse and metric poetry, complete an epic-length series (144 pages) of related poems and keep them readable, and manage the whole way not to drop a single syllable, not include a single throwaway word. I only have a thousand words for this review, and a thousand words is not nearly enough to describe the beautiful intricacies of the construction here, the many parallels that run through the book and the way the lengths of the poems expand and contract depending on what's going on in Hudgins' life; someone, someday soon, will use this book to write a critical thesis. It will be very long.

Upon the release of After the Lost War, one reviewer in the Denver Post called it "one of the best narrative poems to appear in this country in more than thirty years." Indeed. Easily one of the finest books, in any genre, I have read this year. **** ½

In the many discussions of poetry that have been had, one question brought up by the novice is why do some poets write their stories in poems rather than fiction. The answer has always been to point to the classic epics or to the narrative poems of Frost, Robinson, and so on. I've recently found contemporary narratives that I can point to. Dave Mason's "The Country I Remember", the book-length narrative sequences by Marilyn Nelson, "The Homeplace", and Kim Addonizio, "Jimmy & Rita." And now I have another to point to, Hudgins' "After the Lost War."

It's a series of lyric poems, dramatic monologues, and shorter narrative poems that tell the story of poet/musician Sidney Lanier, who lived in the 19th century and fought in the Civil War. Hudgins tells the story through Lanier's point of view, in a voice Hudgins created for the narrator. The poems range from sad to loving to brutal. The poems come together to give us not only the story of Lanier, but a feel for the man and the times. It's a fine work of narrative poetry, one that I think will prove important to bringing the narrative poem back to the position it once held.

"Sometimes, like now, I have a great need
To live outside metaphor,
To know a dawn that's only dawn
And corn that's corn and nothing else."

In the many discussions of poetry that have been had, one question brought up by the novice is why do some poets write their stories in poems rather than fiction. The answer has always been to point to the classic epics or to the narrative poems of Frost, Robinson, and so on. I've recently found contemporary narratives that I can point to. Dave Mason's "The Country I Remember", the book-length narrative sequences by Marilyn Nelson, "The Homeplace", and Kim Addonizio, "Jimmy & Rita." And now I have another to point to, Hudgins' "After the Lost War."

It's a series of lyric poems, dramatic monologues, and shorter narrative poems that tell the story of poet/musician Sidney Lanier, who lived in the 19th century and fought in the Civil War. Hudgins tells the story through Lanier's point of view, in a voice Hudgins created for the narrator. The poems range from sad to loving to brutal. The poems come together to give us not only the story of Lanier, but a feel for the man and the times. It's a fine work of narrative poetry, one that I think will prove important to bringing the narrative poem back to the position it once held.