Benét, Stephen Vincent
Benét, Stephen Vincent ( 1898 – 1943 ),American poet, born in Pennsylvania and educated at Yale. He is best known for his narrative poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body ( 1928 ), and for some of the poems in Ballads and Poems ( 1931 ), including the popular ‘American Names’, with its resounding last line, ‘Bury my heart at Wounded Knee’. He also wrote what he called ‘bread-and-butter’ novels and short stories, and worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood for some time. His folk opera The Devil and Daniel Webster, performed in 1939 , for which he wrote the libretto, was based on his own short story ( 1937 ), and presents the successful appeal of the legendary Webster against the devil's claim to the soul of New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone.
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