People occasionally note the name. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was, of course, American — a fact I bear with the same equanimity one brings to inheriting an uncle's questionable taste in furnishings. My own allegiances lie elsewhere: Keats and his beautiful dying things, Milton and his magnificent argument with God, Kipling and his spine. Poetry that knows what it costs to write it. (Though 'I shot an arrow into the air' does rather stick in the mind. The Americans are not entirely without merit.) 🎩