John Brown's Body

by Stephen Vincent Benét

One of the most widely read poems of our time, John Brown s Body is Stephen Vincent Benet s masterful retelling of the Civil War. A book of great energy and sweep, it swings into view the entire course of that terrible and decisive war, lighting up the lives of soldiers, leaders, and civilians, North and South, amidst the conflict. Generations of readers have found the book a compelling and moving experience.

Genres: Poetry, History, Civil War, Classics, American Civil War, American History, War

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Stephen Vincent Benét, best known brother of William Rose Benét, also wrote John Brown's Body , his narrative poem of Civil War, in 1928. See John Brown.

A mother bore Stephen Vincent Benét into a military family. His father and Laura Benét, his sibling, also widely appreciated literature.

Benét attended Yale University and published Five Men and Pompey in 1915 and The Drug-Shop , collection, in 1917. A year of military service interrupted his studies; he worked as a cipher clerk in the same department as James Grover Thurber. He submitted his third volume of in place of a thesis, and Yale graduated him in 1919.

Stephen Vincent Benét published The Beginning of Wisdom , his first novel, in 1921. Benét then moved to France to continue his studies at the Sorbonne and returned to the United States in 1923 with the Rosemary Carr, his new wife.

Benét succeeded in many different literary forms, which included novels, short stories, screenplays, radio broadcasts, and a libretto for an opera, which Douglas Moore based on "The Devil and Daniel Webster." For his most famous long work, which interweaves historical and fictional characters to relate important events, from the raid on Harper's Ferry to surrender of Robert Edward Lee at Appomattox, he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.

During lifetime, Benét received the story prize of O. Henry, the Roosevelt Medal, and a second Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for the posthumously-published Western Star, the first part of an epic, based on American history. At the age of 44 years, Benét suffered a heart attack and died in New York City.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Brown’s Body won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and it is a remarkable work. It is an epic poem of 15,000 words, largely of blank pentameter verse, that covers the raid at Harper’s Ferry and pivotal scenes in the Civil War leading up to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. There are eight fictional characters that comprise north and south, soldier and non-soldier, men and women, white and black, slave and freemen. They are introduced to round out the story of the Civil War and the actual events and leaders. You learn pretty quickly that all of their lives are pretty bleak but they soldier on nevertheless.

There is a fair amount of coverage of John Brown and the other twenty-one raiders of the Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. This is all five star material. This only makes up the first few chapters. To appreciate the rest it is helpful to know of the major Civil War battles and the long list of generals that make appearances on both sides.

Some caveats, Benet is not sympathetic to the Southern cause, while at the same time his tone is at times patronizing to slaves and freemen and he does use a lot of slave dialect and language that ninety years later is not politically correct.

Benet’s verse is unsurpassed. Here a few stanzas.

This one regarding the fragility of the union.

“Thirteen sisters beside the sea,
(Have a care, my son.)”
“Builded a house called Liberty
And locked the doors with a stately key.
None should enter it but the free.
(Have a care, my son.)
The walls are solid as Plymouth Rock.
(Rock can crumble, my son.)”
.........

or this one about an innocent bystander shot by Brown’s men

“He fell by the station-platform, gripping his belly,
And lay for twelve hours of torment, asking for water
Until he was able to die.
There is no stone,
No image of bronze or marble green with the rain
To Shepherd Heyward, free negro of Harper's Ferry,”

or this one about John Brown and his son

“John Brown did not try to sleep,
The live coals of his eyes severed the darkness;
Now and then he heard his young son Oliver calling
In the thirsty agony of his wounds, "Oh, kill me!
Kill me and put me out of this suffering!"
John Brown's jaw tightened. "If you must die," he said,
"Die like a man.”


Civil War history and poetry. Another one for my six star shelf! Highly recommended.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this, in another edition, more than 20 years ago. I minored in English many years before that, and really hated reading long pieces of poetry. The Faerie Queen comes to mind, but there were others, best forgotten. John Brown's Body was different somehow. I initially dipped into it in a book store, saw that it was written in a style that seemed to have an "aw shucks" nature that I expected to despise, but proceeded to to totally enjoy. I hadn't previously read much specifically about the Civil War; only the Red Badge of Courage, and the relatively brief passages in American History texts. I was aware, for the most part, of the events and their ultimate military and political ramifications, but not of the personal, human costs and rewards. JB'sB changed that.

Benet follows a half dozen or so individuals' stories as the war progresses. I particularly remember a Union soldier, a farmer from Pennsylvania in the Army of the Potomac. He does a lot of marching; he's tired as hell and sick to death of Virginia. He does some more marching, faster now. Eventually he realizes he's not in Virginia anymore. He recognizes the landscape from his youth, fields he had plowed only a couple of years earlier. Of course he's from Adams County and the AOP is approaching his home near the county seat at Gettysburg. Benet does a spectacular job of describing in iambic whatever the climactic charge on 7/3/1863 which results in the soldier losing an arm. Postwar, the former Union soldier, no longer a boy, peacefully drives a team of plowhorses over a field between Seminary and Cemetery Ridges.

I highly recommend this novel.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow is my response to this incredibly ambitious book-length treatment of the Civil War using poetry in a variety of forms. This is a complex book and I find that it isn't accurately treated in a lot of descriptions of it, especially those that call it narrative and blank verse. Though it has narrative strings, they are broken by multiple perspectives, as well as expository and lyrical sections (making it arguably modern). There is blank verse (his best), free verse, prose, ballads, rhymed couplets in tetrameter (his worst), etc. It is primarily a book of many voices and perspectives providing a broad experience of the tragedy of the Civil War.

I discovered this book at my local library and decided I should read it since I have an interest in longer works. Notice I said "should" rather than wanted to. I'm not a history buff, especially not a fan of war stories. Also, when I first cracked the book to get a feel for it, I struck an early saccharine passage about Sally Dupre (who is not so sweet and simple as she develops). Uhg. I suspected there would be a lot of that but thankfully there isn't. Benet also tends to juxtapose more sentimental/saccharine passages against those that are stark portrayals of harsh realities (in fact, some of the juxtapositions are brilliant). Sometimes he uses sing-songy rhymed couplets for subject matter that makes the whole passage ironic.

It amazes me that this book has not been a subject of more serious criticism, but I can guess why. The poetry, though it has stellar moments, is not stellar overall. Some of it could simply have been prose; where meter/rhyme is used, it can be clunky. Though I eventually came to watch carefully when he slipped into couplets for how he was using the form to underscore an event or personality or turn it on its head, I still cringed as I read.

Yet the book is complex and fascinating. It does not take a simplistic or even heroic view of this conflict, which is what I suspected/expected. The men/boys are imperfect, good some days and in some circumstances and not so admirable during others. Not only did I get caught up in the tapestry that Benet weaves, but at the end I would have been happy (were there not already too many books and too little time) to turn around and begin again because I think the second read would have been richer now that I see all he was trying to accomplish--all that he eventually portrays about war, being human, being American, America itself, about being flawed and the outcomes of actions large and small. The book also made me curious about the battles of the Civil War and the key players than I ever have been.

So Wow. Definitely a keeper.

[Charlotte Iannone · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Brown’s Body one of the greatest and most ambitious works of literature I’ve ever read. It should be considered a gem of the American literary canon, and it is an abject shame that Benét is largely forgotten. I honestly haven’t taken this much joy in reading in so long. As I read, I felt this overwhelming urge to share every page. I read the last 15 or so pages aloud to my brother JT, and though he doesn’t typically have an interest in poetry, he felt the magic as much as I do. After we reached the end, I went back and read him my favorite bits — Stonewall Jackson’s death, Pickett’s charge (and really just all of “fish-hook” Gettysburg), Melora’s search for Jack, John Brown’s execution, and the gorgeous invocation. Benét’s great ballad is meant to be shared this way. I’ll be feeding my family pieces of it all summer long.

Reading Benét’s masterwork, I was reminded of Whitman’s preface to Leaves of Grass, where he defines the ideal poet: “His spirit responds to his country’s spirit … he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.” Whitman then famously states that “the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Though this “greatest poem” is intangible, I believe that Benét comes closer to tying it down in words than any other in John Brown’s Body. He brings the intense, visceral tragedy of the war alive, following the ordinary men and women of the North and South as they fight and suffer and dream. Of course, he also gives the famed generals and politicians their moments of humanity where they can come out of their statues and paintings and speak. Benét becomes them all, singing from their mouths with a mind to their fates. I’m particularly interested in his depiction of Lee, who we never get to directly hear. One of the most stirring sections is towards the end, when an aide-de-camp watches Lee’s shadow through the tarp of his tent at night, wondering about what he must think now that the South’s demise is imminent. Yet Lee does not speak.

Benét’s vision for this work is clearest in one of my favorite stanzas, written about one of the first men gunned down at Harper’s Ferry during John Brown’s raid: “There is no stone, no image of bronze or marble green with the rain to Shepherd Heyward, free negro of Harper’s Ferry, and even the books, the careful, ponderous histories, that turn live men into dummies with smiles of wax thoughtfully posed against a photographer’s background in the act of signing a treaty or drawing a sword, tell little of what he was.” In Benét’s history, Heyward gets his chance to speak. When he does, he cries, “Why should anyone want to kill me? Why was it done?”

[Hock Tjoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

National epics do not make for good poetry. Virgil, for instance, pales in comparison with Homer. And of Tennyson's patriotic poems, the most memorable are close to silly rhymes with a jingoistic spirit. Benet's work is sprawling and changes its rhythms often as it tries to encompass the Civil War. Would it have been better with a consistent meter such as empower The Iliad or The Spreading Chestnut Tree? A silly counter-factual question, I know.

But I found some lines heart-breakingly good:

What do souls that bleed from the corpse of battle
Say to the tattered night?
...
There was no real moon in all the soft, clouded night,
The rats of night had eaten the silver cheese,
Though here and there a forgotten crumb of old brightness
Gleamed and was blotted.

... and this on Abraham Lincoln:

Honesty rare as a man without self-pity.

[Everyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary work. I have read it through three times, and dip into it often for favorite passages. Every page has images brilliantly presented.

Sometimes there comes a crack in Time itself.
Sometimes the earth is torn by something blind.
Sometimes an image that has stood so long
It seems implanted as the polar star
Is moved against an unfathomed force
That suddenly will not have it any more.

He had no gift for life, no gift to bring
Life but his body and a cutting edge,
But he knew how to die.

Since I was begotten
My father's grown wise
But he has forgotten
The wind in the skies.
I shall not grow wise.

President Lincoln praying:

O Will of God,
I am a patient man, and I can wait
Like an old gunflint buried in the ground
While the slow years pile up like moldering leaves
Above me, underneath the rake of Time,
And turn, in time, to the dark, fruitful mold
That smells of Sangamon apples, till at last
There's no sleep left there, and the steel event
Descends to strike the live coal out of me
And light the powder that was always there.

At the end of John Brown's trial:

There was a noise of chairs scraped back in the court-room,
And that huge sigh of a crowd turning back into men.

Benet humanizes the Civil War in ways no other work I know of does. He moves effortlessly back and forth between Northern and Southern, between Southern aristocracy, bleak New England farmers, slaves, President Lincoln. He creates more than characters -- he creates living people.

This brilliant passage about John Brown is only one of many examples.

He had the shepherd's gift, but that was all.
He had no other single gift for life.
Some men are pasture Death turns back to pasture,
Some are fire-opals on that iron wrist,
Some the deep roots of wisdoms not yet born.
John Brown was none of these,
He was a stone,
A stone eroded to a cutting edge
By obstinacy, failure and cold prayers.
Discredited farmer, dubiously involved
In lawsuit after lawsuit, Shubel Morgan
Fantastic bandit of the Kansas border,
Red-handed murderer at Pottawattomie,
Cloudy apostle, whooped along to death
By those who do no violence themselves
But only buy the guns to have it done,
Sincere of course, as all fanatics are,
And with a certain minor-prophet air,
That fooled the world to thinking him half-great
When all he did consistently was fail.


JBB is not a book to be approached lightly. It deserves time and attention. But it rewards that time and attention as only those few truly great books can do.

[Pieter Cramerus · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of all time. It is a a 300 page epic poem (mostly blank verse, but rhyming in important passages) which includes each of the classic stages of a Homerian epic. The language and diction are superb, and the blank verse is beautifully evocative. It covers two protagonists at the beginning of the civil war, one from the North, one from the South. Author, Stephen Vincent Benet, paints wonderful word-portraits of all the key generals and politicians, as well as some of the key battles. It is the best book on the Civil War (spoiler alert for Texans and Southerners- the North wins).
It made me into a Civil War aficionado. It also covers John Brown's raid in detail. All of it is fascinating. The two protagonist soldiers, Jack Ellyat, from Connecticut, and Clay Wingate, from Georgia exemplify the two different sides, and are with us for the duration of the war. I looked up names, places, and battles, history of John Brown, prison camps on both sides, etc. as I read. I taught this in summer school; 1/2 the 1st summer period, and the other the next. I love epic poems because they explore human behavior, when on a quest and under stress. It brings out the best and the worst.
NB. Other epics worth exploring are: Beowulf (staple of 12th grade English), Song of Roland, and Sundiata (set in Africa), and Gilgamesh.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the length of this poem scare you! It is FASCINATING. Well, if you are interested in the Civil War, that is. And I am. So it is.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable poem (which the Wall Street Journal describes as "a half-forgotten piece of middlebrow literature whose own legacy is as ambiguous, in its way, as Brown's."), that tells the Civil War story through the eyes of both Northern and Southern characters, with vignettes of the major historical players.Almost as long as the Iliad, and a little longer than the Odyssey, the term epic, though rejected by Benet, certainly fits. Panoramic in scope, Benet portrays the sufferings of all the players with fairness and sympathy. Very rich and evocative writing, full of details of the landscape of both North and South, and much colorful writing about the seasons:

Here was October, here
Was ruddy October, the old harvester,
Wrapped like a beggared sachem in a coat
Of tattered tanager and partridge feathers,
Scattering jack-o-lanterns everywhere
To give the field-mice pumpkin colored moons.
(Book 1)
But fall in the South:
Fall of the quail and the firefly-glows
And the pot-pourri of the rambler-rose
Fall that brings no promise of snows...

I absolutely loved the work. The poem possesses a nobility that is quite uncommon in American literature--an elevated tone that is deeply appropriate. The poem won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929, but seems to have completely dropped off the radar of the American community of letters. I can't understand why: the poem is completely approachable, engagingly written, and the subject matter is of immense interest to the reading public. It's long overdue for critical re-appraisal. Thanks, by the way, to Bruce Lambert for bringing this to my attention

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweeping history of the Civil War in 300+ pages of poetry. It might not sound exquisite, but it was. Benet used so many different styles of verse, and always crafted them perfectly. It took a prodigious talent to pen "John Brown's Body" -- but there were passages that dragged out so long and so formally that they became difficult to follow, and it was a difficulty that subtracted something, some wild joy, from the reading experience -- a joy that I first felt when I picked up the book, that I wanted to continue feeling.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

My opinion of this is mixed. I love the lyrical history of the war -
"Stonewall Jackson, wrapped in his beard and his silence,
Cromwell-eyed and ready with Cromwell's short
Bleak remedy for doubters and fools and enemies,
Hard on his followers, harder on his foes,
An iron sabre vowed to an iron Lord, " -

etc, etc - but I don't much care for the "story" pieces of the epic poem. I tend to skip over them.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing piece of work - to write an epic poem which encompasses the entire Civil War. It was surprising readable and very interesting. I can't imagine how Benet put it all together. Did he write it in chronological order or in bits and pieces and then cobbled it together? Did he maybe write the battles first and then decide on the characters he was going to use to connect them and then write their parts? An immense accomplishment.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry that reads like prose. Beautiful, touching descriptions of people from slaves to southern gentry to fanatic abolitionists to the weary soldiers and their loved ones from both sides. Won the Pulitzer.

[Rose Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This epic poem by Benet beautifully depicts characters from both sides of the American Civil War with malice toward none. It reads easily and naturally, and is in my opinion the great American epic.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Brown’s Body is the quintessential American epic. Benet’s incredible lyricism is insurgent, not to be confined. Indeed, “sometimes there comes a crack in time itself”, and Benet has sent something echoing through the thud of the years. Benet’s treatment of life and war are in equal temper and equal brilliance. If this work is now obscure, it is for its difficulty and length. If Benet’s Lincoln and the like are weak, it is perhaps because he has refused to treat them as myth. Lincoln’s comparing himself to the “old, dead hunting-dog”, dead set on a scent is a particularly compelling passage which has always stuck with me. Benet does not succumb to over-sentimentalism, his pen pricks all fairly and steadily, which is a true testament to his poetic sensibility. However as a consequence, his muse at times forces him beyond his grasp, (ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp), rendering some passages tedious, or images confused. Benet was ambitious, and he did not fully consummate his aspirations. However, precisely for this reason it surpasses many political poems, many epic poems, many American poems. America itself is ambitious, and (Lord knows) unconsummated in its ambition. It takes an imperfect genius to render a genius, imperfect nation. Benet has produced a truly American work, and accomplished something extraordinary, the national epic. It simply must be read.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have owned this for years and finally got through it. You can tell it’s old because there is a lot of non-PC content. It covers all the civil War basically. I lked the part about Gettysburg the best. Poetry is so so with a lot of outdated vocabulary. Still an achievement.

[bob walenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Brown's Body, a 340 page narrative poem about the Civil War, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.
My nonfiction book group chose it for our monthly book for discussion. I seriously doubt I might have read it, otherwise. But in hindsight, I am richer for the experience.
I've watched the Ken Burns' brilliant video series, read the Bruce Catton and Jeff Shaara et al novels, but never realized what a unique and different approach poetry would add to the mixture. Benet's poetry was easy to read.....at times cadenced, at other time prose in stanza form. What was impressive was the imagery and personal impact of the characters. Benet made the people of the Civil War come alive....their language, images, feelings, fears, hatreds and loves. I can see the slaves singing as they worked. I can see the soldiers marching through their home towns as their neighbors cheered their departure. I can still see Jack Ellyat on the ground, watching the grey coated Rebel soldiers of General Pickett march toward him at Gettysburg. Benet told me what was probably going through his mind, as well as what he saw around him....scary and most probable.
Brilliant writing is just that. Poetry is a unique vehicle to use to try to describe a war of the scope of the Civil War. Not many could do it, and stay true to events, people's personalities, and the history.
Benet succeeds masterfully, and although I would only recommend this to a Historian or English Major. I admit i totally enjoyed it!

[Ray Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m fond of epic poetry, from Homer to Milton. I recalled reading excerpts of John Brown’s Body when I was in high school and was curious about this American epic, written in a time when epic poetry had kind of gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

To the modern reader the poem is anachronistic, not just in its choice of genre, but its content. It was written in the 1920s, prior to the Civil Rights movement, while the US was still in the reactionary throes of anti-Reconstruction and Lost-Causism. A time when people of African descent were still violently denied a voice. It was a time where, after the brief light of reconstruction, the US as a whole turned like a dog to vomit and became, in many ways, more racist than it had ever been.

The slaves in John Brown’s Body are content and well treated and only long for freedom out of curiosity not because they were being tortured, raped, and worked to death for fun and profit. And it presents the South in the Lost Cause fashion, as a noble and honorable, if antiquated culture. When, in reality, the South was as aggressively capitalistic and modern as any one was in the US. Nowadays we no longer let the post-bellum fictional rationalizations for Southern aggression hide the reign of terror that was fundamental to the South’s laissez-faire enterprise.

It’s not as bad as the celebratory Gone with the Wind, but come on, Stephen.

With that caveat, there are some powerful passages. If the section on Lincoln’s thoughts regarding the Emancipation Proclamation — full of complexities, ambivalences and uncertainties — don’t bring a tear to your eye, can you call yourself American? And Jack Ellyat as a symbol of America is wonderful and fascinating. And who doesn’t want to read the story of the Battle of Gettysburg in blank verse iambs?

[Red Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this on the History shelf, but the book has plenty of opinion and flavor to it, and I learned a bit not only about John Brown, but about the Civil War.

"What do the souls that bleed from the corpse of battle say to the tattered night?"

Lincoln - "The Union's too big a horse to keep changing the saddle each time it pinches you. As long as you're sure the saddle fits, you're bound to put up with the pinches and not keep fussing the horse."

on Joe Johnston - "in advance not always so lucky, in retreat more dangerous than a running wolf"

Holds that boys go off to war so they can camp out in the woods and cook potatoes and not have any women around to tell them that the potatoes are black.

on Gettysburg -
You say a fate rode a horse
Ahead of those lumbering hosts, and in either hand
He carried a skein of omen. And when, at last,
He came to a certain umbrella-copse of trees
That never had heard a cannon or seen dead men,
He knotted the skeins together and flung them down
With a sound like metal.

[Shaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly well-written epic poem about the root cause and historical course of the bloody, horrific Civil War. Should be mandatory reading for all high school students; especially graduating seniors.

Don't always listen to "mainstream media". We are what we are as a country because of our history and heritage. The Civil War had to happen to make these United States what it is today -- the vanguard of freedom, liberty and justice for all. It falls short of that ideal all the time. Nevertheless, it's still the closest approximation of the "shining city on the hill" on this oft wretched planet.

Good poem, good book, great read!

[Rob Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an epic poem about the American Civil War. It deals not only with great men, but the men and women of both sides the suffered the horror of that conflict. Benét pulls little known facts and stories and weaves them into the narrative. Modern readers may well be put off by some of the words used. This was published in 1928, and the N-word was in common usage. If you pass by the terminology, you will see a sympathetic view of the slaves and their desire for freedom. This is Benét's attempt at writing an Iliad for the U. S. I think he succeeds.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable poem. Some of it feels very modern, and other parts seem anachronistic even for the time it was written, but always the poem is unexpected in the way these events and these people are portrayed. This poem is one of the few things I've read about the civil war that transcends the expected and manages to make human again an event that has become almost hopelessly entwined with the apocryphal.

[Old Time Tales · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book from which all other Civil War books sprung.

If you are a student of the Civil War you must read this. It is thebook from which the scholars learned their first lessons. It should be taught in our schools today.

It does not glorify the war, but the men and women who lived through it. It sparks the desire to hear more of the story. It's poetry is the best history lesson possible.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in high school and over the years the description of General Lee sitting in his tent has stayed in my memory. I bought an old copy from a second hand seller and had to reread it. The description of Lee is as poignant as I remembered.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gift from my Grandmom. It was okay.

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could a Civil War novel in rhyme be good? Believe it or not, this one could.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how the characters from all walks of life crossed each other's paths here and there throughout the story.

[James Violand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patriotic overkill set to verse.

[Tirzah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last summer, I went on a Pulitzer Prize spree. It ended when reality returned with the beginning of school year. So when I requested John Brown's Brody and learned it won the 1929 Pulitzer for poetry, I was happy to resume my spree, even if for a short while.

Though I am not a huge fan of poetry, I appreciate its significance in literature. I wanted to read this poem, because the idea of the Civil War being set to poetry interested me. When I think of epic poems, Beowulf, The Illiad, and the like come to mind. I did not know Americans contributed to the genre.

Overall, this was a poem I am glad I read. Benet succeeds at portraying the mutliple perspectives of the Civil War in a plausible, relatable fashion. Readers journey through this horrible time in history with soldiers of both the North and South; the wives and sweethearts left at home; the slaves and their quest for freedom; the leaders who bear heavy burdens; and even a horse is given a paragraph or two. While the poem effectively captures the pathos of the characters, it also offers a wealth of historical facts from John Brown's raid to the battles and aftermath of the war.

Some parts dragged for me; I think this was largely due to my reading it exhausted after a long day's work. But there were some characters' stories I was less interested in than others. I did not appreciate the profanity throughout; I shouldn't be, but I am always shocked to see foul language in older books, because I am spoiled with old movies' "code cleanliness." There are several times when the "n" word appears as that was a commonly used term during that time. Premarital intimacy between two characters is implied. The details of the wounded and dying were not too graphic.

I'd recommend for those who enjoy poetry or who are curious like me about American epic poems.

*I read a 1929 sturdy hardcover edition. Old books are the best!

[Evan Þ. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This's an epic poem about the American Civil War, from John Brown's raid through Lincoln's assassination. It doesn't tell the history - there're dozens of references which assume the reader already knows the historical facts about the war - but it luxuriates in it and raises it with language to the heights of epic:

"So it runs for years until Jubal Early, riding,
A long twelve months after Gettysburg's high tide,
Sees the steeples of Washington prick the blue June sky
And the Northern king is threatened for the last time.
But, by then, the end is too near, the cotton is withered..."

We shift back and forth between the presidents and generals and fictional common people both soldiers and civilians, showing us the passions and glories and sufferings of the war. Benet's sympathies are obviously with the North - both the North fighting against slavery and the North rising into the industrial era - but he ably portrays and weeps with both sides.

I loved this poem; I recommend it to everyone who knows and loves the history of the Civil War.