Friday, October 24, 2025

The Mountain Whippoorwill by Stephen Vincent Benét (1925)

 "The Mountain Whipporwill"

Bonus: 

The poem

Double Bonus

Summary: Hillbilly wins fiddle contest sounds like the punchline of a joke.

Commentary: We're doing Frankenstein at work. Frankenstein is, bar none, my least favorite book of all time. I've been assigned it I don't know how many times for classes and I've never made it through. Maybe this year will be my year.

As far as I can tell, it's just a really shitty version of Faust, where the doctor pretends he's not evil, and with as much repetition and over writing as possible. People joke about Dickens never using one word where he could five, but Mary Shelley never writes five words when she could write two identical paragraphs.

Anyway, Faust worked its was to O Brother Where Art Thou? which worked its way to The Devil Went Down To Georgia. Apparently, it's based on this poem. Actually a good poem, which is not an opinion I hold often. It has a plot, which always helps. The parenthetical lines really work for the "hillbilly storyteller" aspect, and the italicized portions fit as fun little mini songs. Also, not atrocious fake rhymes or anything.

Fun poem for a light Friday night. 3/5 on the obnoxious classic scale.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Mountain Whippoorwill by Stephen Vincent Benét (1925)

 "The Mountain Whipporwill" Bonus:  The poem Double Bonus Summary: Hillbilly wins fiddle contest sounds like the punchline of a jo...