Trauma

Did Emily Dickinson write about the war?, specifically what was termed calmly the 'American Civil War' . In some respect it raises the question if writers faced with the trauma of a conflict raging in the world somewhere today or in their own backyard, have to in some form or another convey what they feel about that conflict.  With the American Civil War it was a very harsh trauma as the title describes for this blog, the number of deaths caused by Americans killing Americans were in the most part, stupendous. The level of violence exposed to the public was greater than anything imagined in earlier history.

So it would perfectly acceptable for Emily Dickinson to write about what was happening around her in real time. As well her poetry did have vivid description relating to certain instances of the war, notably her poems '409' and '656' which describes the violence. '656' express the amount of blood shed in the war, particularly in one battle; most likely the reports on casualties greatly affected her imagination. With the other one there is one line that resonates within me greatly;

“They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the lune
A wind with fingers goes.” The most vivid description of the method of violence to only which the horror stories and anecdotes of veterans of that war can described, to which one remarked ,“and men were cut in half in the volleys of fire.”