Antigone at Antietam: A Poem in Six Cantos

The story of Antigone is a story of two brothers, dead on opposite sides of a civil war in ancient Greece. Creon, ruler of Thebes, forbids the burial of the rebel brother, on pain of death. Their sister goes against the king, and buries him with rites and libations. She is sentenced to death. Here the Antigone of Sophocles becomes a story of the American Civil War. Loudoun County in northern Virginia is torn between blue and gray. In the King family, Gus enlists with the Potomac Brigade, wh...