June 30, 2004
Belmont Praised in Congressional Record
Sen. Lamar Alexander praised Belmont University for its new literature course, The Poetics of Country Music, in remarks delivered in the U.S. Senate May 3, as reproduced here in the Congressional Record.
Sen. Alexander's remarks:
Mr. President, I wish to talk about songwriters. Italy has its art, and California and Oregon have fine wine, Hollywood has movies, Dalton, GA, has carpets, and Nashville has songwriters.There are a great many beautiful songs that come from Nashville – poems - but I want to especially commend to my colleagues a new song called "Letters from Home." You may hear John Michael Montgomery sing it. It is a poem that touches the heart of Americans at this time. It is especially meaningful with the men and women of our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and all over the world fighting for freedom. This is a story about their loved ones awaiting their coming home. The last stanza goes like this:
I hold it up and show my buddiesThat song was written by Tony Lane and David Lee. I saw them a couple weeks ago at Belmont University in Nashville. Belmont celebrated the introduction of a course on "Poetics in Country Music," to explore literary criticism of song lyrics as we do for other poetry. I salute Belmont University for its leadership.
Like we ain’t scared an’ our boots ain’t muddy
But no one laughs ’cause there’s
Ain’t nothin’ funny when a’
Soldier cries.
So I just wipe my eyes
Fold it up and put it in my shirt
Pick up my gun and get back to work
And it keeps me drivin’ on, waitin’ on letters from home.When Johnny Cash died, the New York Times streamed a headline: "Poet of the Working Poor." Bob Dylan once said Hank Williams was America’s greatest poet. I said on the Senate floor, if that is true, why don’t we have English professors somewhere criticizing their poetry? They are all up in Northeastern schools writing good criticism of mediocre poems while we have poets of the working poor and some of the best poets in Nashville writing poems.
"Letters from Home" is yet another great poem from Nashville songwriters and one more example of why Belmont University’s pioneering work to discuss "Poetics of the Working Poor" is a good idea. There might be more in common between Shakespeare’s sonnets and Hank Williams stanzas than one at first might imagine.
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