Many Gods

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

Word count: 49K words
Chapters: 5

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Many Gods by Cale Young RiceAuthor: Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 10, 2009

Editor's review

Many Gods is a poetic work by the American poet Cale Young Rice, classified under American and Canadian literature. Rice's writing often turns an imaginative eye on foreign civilizations and beliefs, and the title points to a vision of polytheistic faith; readers can sense how early twentieth-century American poetry moved between classical subjects and modern sensibilities. Its value lies not in antiquarian religious scholarship but in the poetic language through which it contemplates gods, fate, and the human condition. Read it slowly, attend to recurring images and turns, and do not insist on construing every line. Readers interested in the history of American poetry or in modern reworkings of classical subjects may set it beside the work of Rice's contemporaries to observe his linguistic choices and emotional tone. As a public-domain ebook, it suits fragmentary reading and reading aloud, and can serve as a reference text for poetry writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

American poetry lovers who want to broaden their reading of early twentieth-century poets outside the mainstream
Literary readers interested in the combination of classical myth and modern poetry
Poets looking for models of imagery and lyric rhythm
Literature students who need public-domain poetic texts as course supplements

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting systematic mythology or a history of religion
General fiction readers who prefer coherent plots and strong narrative
Beginners who need detailed notes and scholarly introductions to enter poetry

Reading tips

Read through once without worrying about full comprehension, mark recurring images, then return to the relevant passages for close reading.
Choose a quiet time to read aloud and feel the rhythm and tone; this makes it easier to enter than silent reading.
After reading, write three to five sentences of response; no need to analyze meter, just note the images that moved you.
Read alongside short poems by American poets of the same period and compare how they handle subjects and language.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a collection of poems or a single long poem?

According to the public-domain catalog information, it is a poetic work by Rice; the exact arrangement should be checked in the ebook text. You need not assume a unified plot; enter by poem or section and attend to the progression of images and moods rather than looking for a continuous story.

Can I read it without knowing classical mythology?

Yes. The poems are not an exam in mythological knowledge; even without familiarity with specific genealogies of gods, readers can sense the reflection on faith and fate through the language and imagery. When you meet an uncertain allusion, skip it for the moment and look it up later, so as not to break the rhythm of reading.

Why is reading aloud recommended over silent reading?

The rhythm, pauses, and tone of poetry emerge more clearly when read aloud, especially in early twentieth-century lyric poetry; reading aloud helps readers catch the emotional shifts produced by line breaks and repetition. Silent reading tends to slide over details of language, while reading aloud forces you to slow down.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943 Author

Cale Young Rice (1872–1943) was an American poet and playwright. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life are difficult to set out, but the eleven works by him held in this collection show that he wrote steadily in both poetry and verse drama. Poems such as Sea Poems, Many Gods and Nirvana Days take the sea, faith and Eastern philosophical reflection as their themes, with concise language and a lyrical, meditative quality; plays such as David: A Tragedy, Yolanda of Cyprus, Porzia and The Immortal Lure draw mainly on historical or legendary stories, using verse dialogue to develop their characters' emotions and conflicts of fate. His writing combines romantic imagination with a search for the meaning of life, and his works hold a place in early twentieth-century American letters, remaining of interest to readers studying the poetry and verse drama of that period.