Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is called Home on the Range.

It is a folk song.

And I have been really fascinated by folk songs of late.

So I'm not going to sing it, but I wanted to read it to focus on the poetry of the lines,

as opposed to just the tune that, the tune that Yolo Beep most familiar with.

This was originally a Western folk song written in 1872 by Dr. Brewster Higley. It was also then performed or written or adapted by William and Mary Goodwin in 1904.

And then the version that I'm going to read today is by John Lomax from 1910.

Lomax was a pioneering musicologist, and he also was a folklorist.

And he did a lot of work preserving 19th century American folk music.

This is one of those songs that you'll have probably heard

if you ever watched a Western movie.

People sing it all the time.

It's been on, I think it's been on Charlie Brown

and on so many TV shows and movies.

I think Bugs Bunny sings it.

I think it's on video games, on The Simpsons.

I mean, it's just everywhere. It's one of the

great American pieces of folklore. But it's actually a pretty interesting bit of poetry as well.

So I wanted to go ahead and read it as we kick off the month of May. It's that season when I begin to

think about farmers and homesteaders and the people who made our country, who tamed the wilderness,

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