Quote

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.

Stephen Vincent Benet

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Stephen Vincent Benet
Age: 44 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 22
Died: 1943
Died: March 13
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
Stephen Vincent Benet
Many
Various
Heart
Tried
Made
Whose
Men
Land
American
Understand
Muse
Strong
Smaller
Art
Diverse

More quotes by Stephen Vincent Benet

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The blog is also a way to continue to register what I see and hear in a day - no matter what the form. In fact, my blog is a complete mixture of forms.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Broad-streeted Richmond . . . The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people, Family trees that remember your grandfather's name.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze, The best yuh ever poured yuh, But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes, For Hell's broke loose in Georgia.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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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.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Something begins, begins Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad, In flesh and spirit and fire. Something is loosed to change the shaken world.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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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.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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When Daniel Boone goes by at night The phantom deer arise And all lost, wild America Is burning in their eyes.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I admire the attention other writers can give to the world we're walking in.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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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.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Sometimes a sign or a quote is simply interesting by itself and does not require anything beyond being framed on a page.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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There's nothing compared to the history of writing about the city of New York that you get, say, in Charles Reznikoff.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls, Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars - They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble, Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy, That something new is coming to the world, The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming, And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books!
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.
Stephen Vincent Benet