Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier
BornSidney Clopton Lanier
(1842-02-03)February 3, 1842
Macon, Georgia, U.S.
DiedSeptember 7, 1881(1881-09-07) (aged 39)
Lynn, North Carolina, U.S.
Resting placeGreen Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland
Occupation
NationalityAmerican
Period1867–1881

Sidney Clopton Lanier[1] (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate States Army as a private,[2] worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned (resulting in his catching tuberculosis), taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he sometimes used dialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic, American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy".[3] A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet".

  1. ^ "Sidney Clopton Lanier". Netstate. September 24, 2009. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  2. ^ Lomax, John (January 14, 2016). "Should Houston's Lanier Middle School Lose Its Name Because Of Confederate Ties?". TexasMonthly.
  3. ^ Noble, Don (May 5, 2014). "Review of Brother Sid: A Novel of Sidney Lanier". NPR. Retrieved August 23, 2018.