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
Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.
Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you might die of the truth.
Remember that when you say "I will have non 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.
I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
Sometimes a sign or a quote is simply interesting by itself and does not require anything beyond being framed on a page.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men.
Grant us a common faith that we shall know bread and peace-that we shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do our best not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march toward the clean world our hands can make.
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse. I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea. You may bury my body in Sussex grass, You may bury my tongue at Champmedy. I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Since graveyards are often built over older burial grounds, I assume Dolores Park was probably an Indian, (an Ohlone) graveyard before that. I think the fact that it has so many layers underneath the contemporary one intrigues me.
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.
American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land.
The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.
Dreaming men are haunted men.
Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.