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It Shall Be Sustained

Posted by David Foster on July 4th, 2008 (All posts by David Foster)

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On July 4, 1941–five months before Pearl Harbor–a long poem titled Listen to the People, written by Stephen Vincent Benet, was presented on nationwide radio. The full text was also printed in Life magazine. Here’s the whole thing. I posted an excerpt of this poem at Chicago Boyz in 2006…in the comments, Steve Barton points to a podcast of a 1943 performance of this work.

Other 4th of July reading:

Power Line has thoughts from Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge(!)

Reenlistment ceremony in Baghdad.

Update: Corrected date of original radio broadcast of the Benet poem.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under History, Iraq, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “It Shall Be Sustained”

  1. renminbi Says:
    July 4th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

    The Lincoln speech from Powerline is just astounding.What a gifted rhetorititian!A politician with genuine beliefs. Where are we to find such today?

    Thanks for the link.

  2. Mace Says:
    July 5th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    That would be seventeen months before Pearl Harbor….

  3. david foster Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 8:05 am

    Mace…’twould indeed be so if I hadn’t gotten the date of the broadcast wrong…it was July 4, 1941.

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