Pine Tree Ballads: Rhymed Stories of Unplaned Human Natur' up in Maine

Day, Holman, 1865-1935Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
267K words
Chapters
27

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Group BiographyDaily ReflectionsNarrative PoetryHumor ReliefDialect NarrativeHeartwarming NarrativeFolk CustomsFolk LifeAmerican Countryside

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.Pine Tree Ballads: Rhymed Stories of Unplaned Human Natur' up in Maine by DayAuthor: Day, Holman, 1865-1935,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 11, 2017

Editor's review

Pine Tree Ballads is a collection of verse stories by Holman Day set in Maine, its subtitle "Unplaned Human Natur'" signaling rough, plainspoken, occasionally humorous small-town human nature. Compared with the author's prose fiction, this verse collection relies more on rhythm, dialect and scene sketches; the pieces are short and suited to reading in fragments. Its value lies in preserving a local oral tradition and folk flavor: logging, neighbors, the quarrels and self-mockery of ordinary people, all lightly carried and left lingering in rhymed narration. For readers studying American regional poetry, dialect literature or New England folk life, it is a light and distinctive source; for general readers, it can serve as a window onto early twentieth-century American small-town life. Note that verse plus dialect poses a double barrier for non-native readers; read one or two poems first to get the feel, then decide whether to read the whole.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start by reading two or three short poems aloud to feel the rhyme and dialect rhythm before deciding on a reading order.
  2. Don't aim to understand every line; first grasp each poem's characters and scene.
  3. Record dialect words alongside standard spellings to build up local expressions.
  4. Read alongside other Maine-themed prose works for cross-reference.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a poetry collection? Judging by the title and subtitle, it is a collection of stories in verse, presenting Maine small-town characters and slices of life in rhymed narration, not a continuous novel. Each piece can be entered independently.
Can I read it without experience of poetry? You can try, but verse rhythm and dialect spelling add difficulty. Read one or two poems aloud first and grasp the general sense of characters and scene rather than puzzling over every word; if it feels hard, turn to the same author's fiction as a stepping stone.
Will the dialect in the book affect comprehension? Somewhat. The author deliberately preserves local spoken spelling and intonation, and some expressions differ from modern standard English. Grasp the overall situation first, and don't stop over an individual word that doesn't affect the main point.
Is it suitable for classroom teaching? It can serve as supplementary material for American regional literature or dialect writing, but teachers need to provide background notes and vocabulary support. Since there is no annotation or translation, it is not recommended as a standalone textbook for younger or beginner students.

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About the author

Day, Holman, 1865-1935 Author

Holman Day (1865-1935) was an American writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life remain little known to Chinese readers. Fourteen of his works are held in the collection, centered on New England rural and coastal life and spanning novels and verse stories. Representative works include King Spruce, set against the lumber industry; The Landloper, the romance of a man on foot; and Blow The Man Down, a romance of the coast. Pine Tree Ballads and Up in Maine tell in verse of Yankee daily life in Maine. His plain, humorous style draws on dialect and local color, and his works, often classed as inspirational coming-of-age writing, portray ordinary people striving and growing amid nature and their home soil.