Thank God Willa Cather was around to write a Levi Jeans commercial....

[WCGreen]

Pioneers! O Pioneers!
COME my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the
seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_094.html

[PassingFair]

1. Its Walt Whitman....

But Willa did write a book by the same name....

[WCGreen]

2. Well, I guess I should double check the internets..

[PassingFair]

3. I only know this because I was FORCED FED Willa Cather in high school.

I have never recovered.

:puke:

[WCGreen]

5. I only read one of her short stories...

I wasn't that impressed...

[PassingFair]

7. You got off easy....

We had to read "My Antonia" AND "O Pioneers".

I am so traumatized, that to this day, I won't go near Nebraska!

[snagglepuss]

9. LOL. Well at least the trama didn't hurt your sense of humour.

I've always had it in mind to read her but never have gotten around to it. You've gone put a chill on that though I'm now rather curious why she's had that effect on you. :freak:

[TuxedoKat]

12. Don't hold it against Nebraska...

alot of great people there -- descendants of the immigrants she deigned to write about in such a racist manner.
She may have been unconscious of some of her racism at the time though. I hated My Antonia too. I had to include
it in a paper about diversity and multiculturalism and thoroughly enjoyed ripping it apart.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. What are you watching?

:rofl:

That's a great poem...

Whoever wrote it...

[nolabear]

6. helluva strange jeans ad but i'm happy to see whitman

and i'm trapped under a dog and can't shift.

[PassingFair]

8. It does get under your skin a little...

I was perplexed the first time I saw it.

Intrigued the second time.

And enjoyed it the third time.

I think it was a bold move for Levi's.

It shows that we are hungry for the elevation of the
common man, I think.

The Unions should take note and do some propagandizing
of their own right now.

[nolabear]

13. Hmmm...wonder what other poems would make good jeans ads.

I know!

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

[PassingFair]

14. I like this one:

snip> That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? <unsnip

[AlienGirl]

10. Those commercials skeeve me out.

The romanticized poverty, conflation of "rural" with "virtuous", the adoration of youth and strength, framing that makes the subjects seem heroic, suggestion of unstoppable destiny-propelled momentum (toward what?), the torches, the "Hail-Caesar" salute in one of them, and the essentialist suggestion about national character...all stacked together, even without malicious intent, creep me right the fuck out. They are just far too close to the kind of artistic images that caught the imagination of many Germans between the 1920's and 1940's.

I know they're just selling jeans. Nevertheless, they suggest a certain cultural openness to things that eventually lead toward nightmares.

Tucker

[WCGreen]

11. The commercial does creep me out...