Books: Narrative Poetry

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The Poem. Rustic Homer and urban Virgil used roundly to invoke the muses before composing an epic. Poet Stephen Vincent Benét, however, narrowly and specifically invokes the "American Muse," by crying, "you are the buffalo-ghost, the broncho-ghost ... a friend, an enemy, a sacred hag with two oceans in her medicine bag . . . and you are . . . the cheap car parked by the station door. . . ." A brief prelude concerning the Yankee slaver that...

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