The Song of Hiawatha

I approached *The Song of Hiawatha* with skepticism—I’d heard it dismissed as quaint or even borderline colonial in its romanticization of Indigenous culture. But William Hootkins’ performance made me reconsider. His voicing of Hiawatha is less a performance than a revelation; he doesn’t overact the drama but lets Longfellow’s words do the work, his voice a warm baritone that rides the iambic tetrameter like a canoe on smooth water. The production is clean, with subtle ambient sounds—rustling leaves, distant drums—that ground the listener in the story’s world without ever feeling gimmicky. Where the audiobook stumbles is in Longfellow’s more florid passages, where the archaic phrasing and relentless rhyme scheme can start to feel like a linguistic obstacle course. Hootkins handles it deftly, but there were moments I wished for a breather, a chance to let the language sink in without the metronome of the meter dictating every pause. That said, the climax—Hiawatha’s parting with Minnehaha, the heartbreaking finale—is rendered with such raw emotion that it transcends any earlier stiffness. If you’ve ever doubted that poetry can be gripping, this performance might just convert you.