For the last month or so, I've been irked by one commercial on TV: The Levi's jeans Go Forth campaign. I'm sure you've seen them, and, if you're a book lover (or an English major), I bet you recognized the style right off the bat. Who else in our literature history has written in such a style that provokes such a grand majesty of a country once beloved by so many?
Wait, is that Walt Whitman being read to endorse jeans? Has consumerism hit a whole new low by exploiting a poet of the common man? Is that why I'm viewing poems like "America" and "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" juxaposed with models posing as carefree teenagers in love, the ghetto and children of this country? And does the target audience even know that these are poems by Whitman and not just advertisment clutter when they waltz into their department stores and have Mom and Dad dish out the cash for jeans too expensive to buy?
"America"
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
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