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🗓️ 16 April 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Today it’s Whitman (and Dylan) on the march of progress.
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is |
0:05.9 | Tuesday, April 16th, 2020. Today's poem is by Walt Whitman, and it's called O Pioneers. This is an ode to westward expansion, an ode to manifest destiny, an unabashed ode to the American spirit. |
0:31.6 | Whitman added this to his continually evolving collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, around the year 1865, |
0:41.3 | the year that the Civil War ended. |
0:44.3 | It's possible that the writing or completion of this poem, or at least its final appearance in print, |
0:52.3 | at that time, marked this renewed optimism on Whitman's part |
0:58.8 | that with the war over, this dream of spreading westward could resume. |
1:07.1 | You'll see here that for him, this movement marks a definite break with ages past and ages |
1:15.6 | to come. |
1:16.2 | He addresses both the Western youths, but also the elder races. |
1:23.7 | An address that for me often calls to mind a few lines from Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a Change. |
1:31.9 | In fact, the entirety of Dylan's song seems to capture a similar spirit a hundred years later. |
1:42.3 | Here's the stanza in question from Dylan. Come mothers and fathers throughout the land. |
1:49.5 | Don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. |
1:55.5 | Your old world is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one. You can't lend your hand. The times they are a |
2:02.9 | change in. And you will note a similar spirit throughout Whitman's O Pioneers. See what else |
2:12.8 | you note, though, the various analogies he adopts to describe both this movement westward, but also |
2:23.3 | the spirit that makes it possible and the spirit discernible in those who are going to |
2:29.7 | undergo this task, which is not an easy or always a glamorous one, though Whitman is trying hard |
2:36.9 | here in this poem to correct that latter fact. Here is, O Pioneers, Come, my tan-faced |
2:46.6 | children, follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols. Have you your sharp-edged |
2:53.5 | axes. Pioneers, O pioneers. For we cannot tarry here. We must march, my darlings. We must bear the brunt of |
... |
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