“TBartel” over at Evangelical Outpost writes about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, meditating on the whole modern problem of “what is poetry?” (A question that would never have occurred to our ancestors.)

Rhyming couplets, simple diction, and a heart-warming ending: it is for these qualities that Longfellow is lately maligned. Yet it is for these same qualities that Longfellow was once loved. In the mid-19th century, Eliot’s and Pound’s modernism had not yet marginalized formal, accessible poetry, and the American public had no conception, as our century does, that well made poetry must be obscure and difficult. Thousands bought and loved Longfellow’s lyrical, accessible poetry, so much so that halfway through his 50 year career, he was able to retire from teaching to live off money from book sales. Hiawatha was the bestselling book of poetry of the 19th century, not only in America, but in Europe as well.

To the list of TBartel’s recommendations, I would add Tales of a Wayside Inn. It includes Longfellow’s retelling of the saga of Olaf Trygvesson. This was actually my own first introduction to the saga material.