Stephen Vincent Benet
Stephen Vincent Benet
Stephen Vincent Benét /bᵻˈneɪ/was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster"and "By the Waters of Babylon". In 2009, The Library of America selected Benét’s story "The King of the Cats"for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth22 July 1898
CountryUnited States of America
I had lost something in my youth and made money instead.
Sometimes a sign or a quote is simply interesting by itself and does not require anything beyond being framed on a page.
Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.
I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.
Technology will never rescue anyone from being a bad poet, but if you're good, it has the potential to do a lot of exciting things.
Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.
As for what you're calling hard luck - well, we made New England out of it. That and codfish.
I have fallen in love with American names, the sharp, gaunt names that never get fat.
I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.
If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.
It's to a younger people's advantage to work with evolving computer technologies that provide so many ways to explore the use and distribution of text, including sound, images and motion.
A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.
Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines.
When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from "A" - particularly sections "22" and "23." It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.