The Song of Hiawatha

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in English and shaped by a very steady rhythmic pattern. It is a long narrative poem built around Native American characters and traditions, with Hiawatha, an Ojibwe warrior, at its center. The poem also focuses on his relationship with Minnehaha, a Dakota woman, and sets much of the action in the Pictured Rocks area of Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow drew on oral traditions connected to the Ojibwe folk hero Manabozho, while also adding his own inventions and shaping the material into a literary form.

This is a good fit for readers who want something between poetry and story, and who are open to slower, highly patterned writing rather than a fast-moving plot. It works well if you are interested in 19th-century American literature, in verse that relies on sound and repetition, or in books that turn folklore into an extended literary piece. Its closest company is with epic poetry and works rooted in legend and oral tradition, especially when the language itself is as important as the events being described.