Never going to read this, but the $10 purchase from Wm James Books in Port Townsend is well justified by the John Steuart Curry illustrations. ( )

This is one I don't recall, except rembering I enjoyed it. ( )

4/14/22

A remarkable poem. Some of it feels very modern, and other parts seem anachronistic even for the time it was written, but always the poem is unexpected in the way these events and these people are portrayed. This poem is one of the few things I've read about the civil war that transcends the expected and manages to make human again an event that has become almost hopelessly entwined with the apocryphal. ( )

An amazing piece of work - to write an epic poem which encompasses the entire Civil War. It was surprising readable and very interesting. I can't imagine how Benet put it all together. Did he write it in chronological order or in bits and pieces and then cobbled it together? Did he maybe write the battles first and then decide on the characters he was going to use to connect them and then write their parts? An immense accomplishment. ( )