Western Star

by Stephen Vincent Benét

In 1934, Stephen Vincent Benet planned and began a long narrative poem about the western migration of peoples and more specifically the pioneers, first as they came to America and then as they spread out through America toward the West. It was to be a long poem of 3 to possibly 5 books. He worked on it off and on, but in 1943 he put together for publication, Book One, Western Star. His untimely death leaves only this part of his project.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, History

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1901

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

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most likely your 87-year-old grandmother Esther did not give you this book (and only this book) and leave you wondering why for 17 years until you found yourself writing her eulogy and suddenly realized that the title, Western Star, refers to the planet Venus -- her namesake. This is the reason this book became special to me, and why I felt duty-bound to read it..

It is not the style of writing we care to read much these days, but this epic verse has its redeeming passages. Here are three:

"So, when you ask about Americans,
I cannot tell their motives or their plans
Or make a neat design of what they are.
I only see the fortune and the bane,
The fortune of the breakers of the earth,
The doom arisen with the western star."

"Then it arose, beyond the last dark wave,
Mockingly near, unmercifully far,
Cold with enchantment, naked from the grave,
The free-born image, the outlier's star,
The loadstone of the iron in the breast,
Never to be forgotten or possessed."

"Exile, rebel, men against fortune, all
Who are driven forth, who seek new life and new hope
As the wheel of England turns, they are coming now
To the exile's country, the land beyond the star.
(Remember that till you die. Remember that.
Remember the name of the outcast and the stranger.
Remember when you say
'I will have none of this exile and this stranger
For his face is not like my face and his speech is strange.'
You have denied America with that word
Though your fathers were the first to settle the land.)"

[Polly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an interesting way of talking about the colonization of the US. I'm not really into history, but I found myself engrossed in the lives of the people in this novel. The poetic style makes this book a relatively quick read. Definitley worth checking out!

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entire epic poem about westward migration was unfinished at the poer's death, but this part that was published won the Pulitzer Prize.

[Old Time Tales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Western Star

A song of Americas birth. A history like none we read today. Do not fear the poetry. Love it. It brings joy and sadness.

[Maryjane Nordgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Point of View becomes fascinating as Benet takes me into the hearts and fears of persons - not just ancestors, as he says. I would have continued reading the 3 to 4 next books had he lived to write them, i was so fascinated.