In the mid 19th-century, when the United States was still in search of its own artistic tradition, the sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (circa 1844–1907) traveled to the Old World and combined the unique American culture with the beauty of European classicism. Her passion for sculpture had been first ignited in Boston, where she saw a…

One indication of a poet’s importance is how often his or her poems are set to music. Hundreds of composers, from Verdi, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius to lesser names, have transposed Shakespeare’s plays into operas, ballets, overtures, and every other existing musical form. Throw in compositions that have been directly inspired by the Bard, such as…

It was dawn, April 19, 1775, and the British troops who had left Boston earlier that night arrived at Lexington, Massachusetts, in search of caches of arms gathered by American colonialists and hoping to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock. Assembled on Lexington’s town green was a collection of civilians: militia roused to confront the…

DUMda DUMda DUMda DUMda Like the constant beat of drums at a tribal gathering, the rhythm of the poem reverberates in our hearts: BY the SHORE of GITche GUMee, BY the SHINing BIG-Sea-WAter We hear its rhythm as it carries us through the epic travels of the first legendary American hero, Hiawatha. This was not the first long poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…