A Soldier's Letter By Fitz-James O Brien

When poets write from their own experiences they typically transfer over the emotions of which they associate with those specific experiences into their writing. As expected, war poets issue a conglomeration of emotions into their works due to traumatic images and/or events. A war poet is known to compose his or her pieces in the time and on the subject of war. During the American Civil War, most of these poets were directly involved as soldiers. However, some of these writers were instead merely eye witnesses to battle and its aftermath, for example: Walt Whitman having volunteered as medical help in hospitals around Washington D.C. Sometimes a soldier directly involved in war can write with surprising enthusiasm, while a citizen aiding in

O’Brien was well known for being a writer of short-stories, a critic, and a playwright in New York. Interestingly he was also often seen at Walt Whitman’s favorite bar known as “Pfaff’s Cellar”. Succeeding his work in literature and the arts he volunteered for the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard in 1861. During battle in February of 1862 he was wounded, although he managed to kill his attacker. He died a couple months later as a result of his wound. A month prior to his death his poem “A Soldier’s Letter” was published, and it is perhaps his most famous. Within this poem he uses a multitude of words that have positive connotations toward beauty and serenity, for example: “sunlight”, “lily”, “rose”, and “ivory”. All of these words are not ideas you would expect a soldier would write about during something as ugly and as tragic as war. To further this point, starting from its 19th line the poem is as follows, “War is not quite so hard as you poor townspeople think ; We have plenty of food to eat, and a good, warm blanket at night…” (O’Brien 83). This line evidently points out that O’Brien views his time serving in the war in a very “glass half-full” methodology. With that being said, “A Soldier’s Letter” was written on January 20th of 1862, finished before the event of his fatal wound. Might this poem have been written in a different tone if it had come after February of 1862? It can’t be known for certain. O’Brien was either unaffected by the sights of battle or he had not been through the bloodier fights as others had