Editorial Reviews
Product Description
A selection of astonishing poems written late in life by one of the leading American scientists of the 19th Century. Nathaniel Shaler had been an artillery officer in the Army of Kentucky during the Civil War. In these poems, he returns in memory to experiences he could never leave behind. With an introduction, notes, and a useful appendix by editor R.L. Barth.

About the Author
Nathaniel Shaler was a student at Harvard, studying zoology and geology under Louis Agassiz, when the Civil War broke out. He completed his studies, then in 1862 returned to his native Kentucky where he took a commission as an artillery officer in the Army of Kentucky. For the next two years, he went through the kind of experiences that only happen in war. After the war, he had a distinguished career as a leading figure in the American scientific community. But the experiences of the war never left him, and late in life Shaler wrote a series of narrative poems about the war. The poems are remarkable although largely forgotten now. They are all the more remarkable in that Shaler had no prior history as a poet. R.L. Barth--himself a poet who has written often of experiences in war--has unearthed Shaler's poems, selected and edited the best of them, and provided an introduction, notes, and an appendix.