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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
Art
Diverse
Many
Various
Heart
Tried
Made
Whose
Men
Land
American
Understand
Muse
Strong
Smaller

More quotes by 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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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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At first I was blogging everyday, but I don't do that anymore. It varies sometimes I'll write these little essays and other times political commentaries. Other times it'll just be new work that I'm doing.
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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One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.
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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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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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
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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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Our earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexxed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.
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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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.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make. A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years - a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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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.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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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.
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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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