themselves. One problem with some recent western movies is that the writer or director has tried to impose a late-twentieth-century viewpoint on a nineteenth-century situation, and it won't work.
A person or a situation can only be understood against the background of its own time.
One of the best pieces of writing about the American frontier is Stephen Vincent Ben@et's poem The Ballad of William Sycamore. His American Names is another good example, the poem ending with that beautiful line which has since been used as a book title, "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee."
Ben@et is, without doubt, one of the very best American writers, best known perhaps for his John Brown's Body, but many of his short stories about America and elsewhere cannot be surpassed. For example, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," "A Tooth for Paul Revere," and "Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer" capture a wonderful mood of a time now gone, which he invests with a quality all his own. Another Ben@et story, The Last Legion, tells of a time in ancient Britain when the legions of Rome were finally leaving that island, abandoning it to the invading barbarians.
William Rose Ben@et, who wrote much fine poetry (and was brother to Stephen), is responsible for a great favorite of mine, a poem I often read to my children, "The Skater of Ghost Lake." His Merchants from Cathay is a delight.
Another favorite poem is Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party." This one I also often recited, after learning it by many rereadings. One must understand when I speak of reciting that I was doing this around campfires, in bunkhouses, and such places.
I have no skills at performance, only a good memory. Such audiences are not inclined to be critical, but I often found a high level of appreciation among them, and many times requests would be made for poems by Wordsworth, Byron, or Tennyson, to name only a few.
Wandering men have always had a love for poetry, perhaps in part because it can be easily memorized and provide company on many a cold and lonely night. Wars also give birth to poetry written by the combatants, and the sale of poetry books goes up during most wars.
Often when standing lookout in the ship's bow, I whiled away the time by repeating poetry that I had learned back along the way or, even more often, trying to compose some of my own. At the time I knew nothing of the various verse forms and would not have recognized an iambic pentameter if we had come face to face on the street. All I had going for me at the time was a feeling for rhythm and a love for words.
The writing of poetry is rarely an easy thing, although once in a while everything will fall into place. Poe, I believe, needed four years to complete the final version of "The Raven." Of course, he was doing much else at the time. Goethe's Faust was begun in 1808; the second part did not appear until 1832.
When I first began writing and was unable to sell a short story, I wrote anything I could sell for a few dollars: two-line jokes, jingles, small bits of poetry or verse, mostly nature pieces. But those days were still far off and away when I shipped out of San Pedro for the Far East.
The roads to knowledge are many. One of the greatest for me began in a very unexpected way. We were coming up to the mouth of a jungle river and there were scattered islets in the approaches. On one of these I saw what appeared to be an interesting ruin and later, when I had some time, I hired a boy with a boat to sail me out there.
The ruin was not interesting, but the boy was.
He wore a turban, a baju (short jacket), and a sarong, and was, he told me, an Arab.
Surprised, I asked him how an Arab happened to be in what was then the East Indies and is now Indonesia. He gave me an odd look, then replied that Arabs had been in those islands for four hundred years. Determined to overcome my ignorance (which was probably shared by many educated Westerners), I plied him with questions. He could answer only a few, but he had
A person or a situation can only be understood against the background of its own time.
One of the best pieces of writing about the American frontier is Stephen Vincent Ben@et's poem The Ballad of William Sycamore. His American Names is another good example, the poem ending with that beautiful line which has since been used as a book title, "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee."
Ben@et is, without doubt, one of the very best American writers, best known perhaps for his John Brown's Body, but many of his short stories about America and elsewhere cannot be surpassed. For example, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," "A Tooth for Paul Revere," and "Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer" capture a wonderful mood of a time now gone, which he invests with a quality all his own. Another Ben@et story, The Last Legion, tells of a time in ancient Britain when the legions of Rome were finally leaving that island, abandoning it to the invading barbarians.
William Rose Ben@et, who wrote much fine poetry (and was brother to Stephen), is responsible for a great favorite of mine, a poem I often read to my children, "The Skater of Ghost Lake." His Merchants from Cathay is a delight.
Another favorite poem is Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party." This one I also often recited, after learning it by many rereadings. One must understand when I speak of reciting that I was doing this around campfires, in bunkhouses, and such places.
I have no skills at performance, only a good memory. Such audiences are not inclined to be critical, but I often found a high level of appreciation among them, and many times requests would be made for poems by Wordsworth, Byron, or Tennyson, to name only a few.
Wandering men have always had a love for poetry, perhaps in part because it can be easily memorized and provide company on many a cold and lonely night. Wars also give birth to poetry written by the combatants, and the sale of poetry books goes up during most wars.
Often when standing lookout in the ship's bow, I whiled away the time by repeating poetry that I had learned back along the way or, even more often, trying to compose some of my own. At the time I knew nothing of the various verse forms and would not have recognized an iambic pentameter if we had come face to face on the street. All I had going for me at the time was a feeling for rhythm and a love for words.
The writing of poetry is rarely an easy thing, although once in a while everything will fall into place. Poe, I believe, needed four years to complete the final version of "The Raven." Of course, he was doing much else at the time. Goethe's Faust was begun in 1808; the second part did not appear until 1832.
When I first began writing and was unable to sell a short story, I wrote anything I could sell for a few dollars: two-line jokes, jingles, small bits of poetry or verse, mostly nature pieces. But those days were still far off and away when I shipped out of San Pedro for the Far East.
The roads to knowledge are many. One of the greatest for me began in a very unexpected way. We were coming up to the mouth of a jungle river and there were scattered islets in the approaches. On one of these I saw what appeared to be an interesting ruin and later, when I had some time, I hired a boy with a boat to sail me out there.
The ruin was not interesting, but the boy was.
He wore a turban, a baju (short jacket), and a sarong, and was, he told me, an Arab.
Surprised, I asked him how an Arab happened to be in what was then the East Indies and is now Indonesia. He gave me an odd look, then replied that Arabs had been in those islands for four hundred years. Determined to overcome my ignorance (which was probably shared by many educated Westerners), I plied him with questions. He could answer only a few, but he had
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