A Cycle of the West

John G. Neihardt spent much of his life building this epic cycle of five narrative poems about the American West, composing the parts between 1912 and 1941 and gathering them as a single work in 1949. The songs follow the trappers, mountain men, and native nations of the frontier, from the betrayal and revenge of the wounded hunter Hugh Glass, left for dead in the wilderness, to the cavalry campaigns and the final tragedy of the Ghost Dance. Neihardt wrote in blank verse with the sweep of Homer, aiming to give the vanishing frontier the dignity of classical epic. It stands as the largest achievement of Nebraska’s poet laureate. A free PDF and EPUB edition are available to download.