it was really cool to experience a piece of long form narrative poetry written in modern english using dactylic hexameter (the meter of the odyssey and the iliad). for those unfamiliar, evangeline is about the expulsion of the acadians from canada, and one acadian woman's quest to try to find her husband she was separated from during the deportations.
the story was pretty engaging too. it felt like it was more or less the correct length and didn't go too long. but we really wish it had engaged at all with settler colonialism, interrogated where all of this land came from, portrayed the historic echo of settlers pushing people off their land only to be pushed off their land in turn by yet more settlers. the native people in the story are few and at the margins. but on the more positive side of things: there was lots of good imagery and poetry in it though. i'm glad i read it, especially being someone interested in epic/longform narrative poetry. in particular i was struck by this description of a farm at sunset:
Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of shadow and sunshine
Ran near the tops of the trees; but the house itself was in shadow,
And from its chimney-top, ascending and slowly expanding
Into the evening air, a thin blue column of smoke rose.
In the rear of the house, from the garden gate, ran a pathway
Through the great groves of oak to the skirts of the limitless prairie,
Into whose sea of flowers the sun was slowly descending.
it just pleases me to see attention paid to that thresholdish moment where the tops of trees are illuminated but things on the ground are not. that's one of my favorite times of day
this metaphor referencing (preelectric?) light pollution/urban skyglow to describe a angelic halo is also very interesting to me
Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying
Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there
Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor,
Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and apostles,
Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance.
Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial,
Into whose shining gates erelong their spirits would enter.
i whispered it to myself as i read it because poetry is really meant to be heard, but i kind of wish i had listened to an audio reading of it instead, because it's honestly difficult for me too read aloud and simultaneously comprehend what i'm reading. i have troubled doing both at once. at any rate, the poem is very phonetically beautiful. i like the usage of hexameter.
read it for yourself on project gutenberg or have a free audio book from libri vox. it's about a 2-4 hour read
