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     www.jameswhitcombriley.com is very aware that many teachers shun the literary work of James Whitcomb Riley because some of his poetry is written in vernacular. While we acknowledge it is hard to teach "good grammer" and poems with "ain't" in them at the same time, we think there may be an alternative - the James Whitcomb Re-Riley Project here at www.jameswhitcombriley.com.

    It should be remembered that probably James Whitcomb Riley never was taught "proper usage."  He became a writer in spite of his very limited education in the first generation of Hoosiers after his home state was settled.  He was born in a log cabin for heaven's sake. James Whitcomb Riley did not graduate from the private school he was attending as a child in the Greenfield (IN) Masonic Hall although it was mathematics that did him in and not language arts.  Riley's continued interest in the English language was profound and he never quit studying it.  His excellence in poetic expression was unaffected by his lack of education. When Yale University gave him an honorary degree calling him America's "national poet" at a ceremony at Battell Chapel there on June 25, 1902, the day's orator, Professor Bernadolte Perrinm said, "his hundreds of thousands of readers come to love him, as Whittier and Longfellow were loved.  The rustic voices of his dialect have revealed Theocritan and Sicilian shepherds in our Indiana.  The murmur of their voices for countless men and women is like Shakespeare's sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care."

     Nevertheless, "the James Whitcomb Re-Riley" project is underway to render the Riley humanistic heritage more acceptable to the teachers of America. We do what we have to here at www.jameswhitcombriley.com to "spread" the humble message of Riley poetry.

    Below is the content of the first fruit of the "Re-Riley" project.  It is the most kenotic poetry in the English language and consists of the "Benjamin Johnson of Boone" material originally found in the