Review: John Brown’s Body

Published in 1928, “John Brown’s Body” is an epic poem about the Civil War. It was written by Stephen Vincent Benet, a poet who is basically unknown today but was a big deal in his time. In fact, the poem won the Pulitzer Prize.

I’d never heard of this poem or the author before, but I was interested in it so I gave it a go. Is it worth your time? Well, yes and no. It’s a book of highs and lows and overall pretty inconsistent.

The story jumps between narratives of battles, speeches by generals, and some side stories about soldiers and bystanders in the war. While it generally follows the course of the war, if you don’t already know the chronology of events you won’t know what is happening. And the quality of these is pretty much all over. The side stories about the soldiers, like the one about Jack Ellyat, who fights for the Union but is captured, escapes, and finds himself in the country at a farmer’s estate where he falls in love with the farmer’s daughter and has a child with her, are poignant and really a pleasure. On the other hand, the battle narrations are just plain boring.

Also inconsistent is the poetry itself. It’s not written in one style, and sometimes it’s just straight up prose with line breaks to make it look like verse. Most of it is unrhymed, but occasionally he starts rhyming for no apparent reason. It’s always bad. Take this example:

The prisoners with their sick, dazed wonder
And the mouths of children caught in a blunder
And over it all, the guns, the thunder,
The pace, the being willing to die,
The stinging color of victory.

When he starts rhyming, you can’t expect him to follow any pattern. It might start ABAB, then it will switch to AABB, then it could be AAABB or just AA. It’s really distracting to say the least.

He also has this thing he does where a line sometimes doesn’t end with a period even though it’s clearly the end of a sentence.

Spade saw the yellow river rolling ahead
His sore, cracked lips curled back in a death’s head grin.

He doesn’t always do it, so I have to figure there is a reason, but I don’t know what that reason is. Mostly I just found it annoying.

When he’s not narrating or reciting events and just kind of loses himself in the moment it’s enjoyable. I mentioned the story of Jack Ellyat, but his love interest Melora Vilas also has some “screen time”. Jack returns to the war and she wonders if he’ll ever return and if she should just forget that he ever existed. He hardly has to write any emotions onto the page because the strength of the story speaks for itself.

There are a few other things to mention. First, he drops the n-word regularly. Pretty much every character uses it. Second, whenever a black person speaks, they speak like some provicinial yokel, slurring every word. It’s bad.

Overall, I would say that unless you are a big Civil War buff or you have some insane project to read every Pulitzer Prize winner, it’s probably not worth your time. I was happy that I learned about it and gave it a shot, but I wouldn’t read it a second time.

Score: C