A review by larkspire
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2.0

I liked most of the book. It's nice to see poetry based on Native American stories, even if it's a little misguided in blending a whole lot of different tales together and attributing them all to Hiawatha even though they probably pre-date him by hundreds of years. Oh, and I disagree with Longfellow's choice to use a secondary source rather removed from the cultures the stories come from.

Then the two Manifest Destiny chapters come in. Christ.

The metre was cool but the repetition wasn't to my taste. I'm not sure whether it was purely a stylistic choice, or simply Longfellow twisting himself in knots to satisfy the metre.