My poetry is included in most of the historical anthologies of American poetry and I am regarded as a significant, though secondary, figure in nineteenth-century American literature.
In 1911 the General Assembly of South Carolina passed a resolution instituting the verses of my poem "Carolina" as the lyrics of the official state anthem.
I thought that would be the end of my musical career, but recently some of my writing was on the number one album on Billboard, whatever that is.
One fellow broke down my life in this boilerplate fashion: "The poet laureate of the Confederacy. The voice of the promise of the antebellum South. The guy who forced anapests into bed with iambs, who taught school in the '50s and disappeared into a haze of student themes and spelling quizzes, who emerged to publish his exquisite poems in the Southern Literary Messenger, who was written off as a has-been after the war, and who suddenly shifted gears and died of consumption in 1867. Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Confederate recording artist Henry Timrod!"
