Poetry by Joey Connolly
The Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem adopted in 1931, was written as a poem on 09/14/1814 during the War of 1812. A British tune was used later to make it a song. Americans know little about the War of 1812 and why it was fought. It was written before the US fought and thousands of military died in the American Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and minor wars. This has led to discussions about changing it. Here are some proposed songs for a different national anthem: Which one do you like most or want to change?
GOD BLESS AMERICA, was written by Irving Berlin in1918 during WWI and revised before WWII in 1938:
“God Bless America /Land that I love
Stand beside her/ and guide her
Through the night with the light from above
From the mountains / To the prairies
To the oceans / White with foam
God Bless America/ My home sweet home.”
AMERICA the BEAUTIFUL, lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895, a poem written in Pikes Peak, CO, later set to music:
“Oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain
America, America God shed his grace on thee, And
crowned thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”
YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG, written by George M. Cohan was the first song in American history to sell over one million copies of sheet music. It debuted in Cohan’s musical George Washington Jr. in 1906:
” You’re a grand old flag. You’re a high flying flag
And forever in peace may you wave
You’re the emblem of The land that I love
The home of the free and the brave
Every heart beats true ‘Neath the Red, White, and Blue
Where there’s never a boast and a brag,
Should old acquaintance be forgot
Keep your eyes on the grand old flag.”
THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, written in 1940 by Woody Guthrie is probably America’s most famous folk song. Woody Guthrie served on a Merchant Marine US Army ship in WWII. His ship was torpedoed by a German submarine but he survived. The U.S government hired him to write a series of songs about the development of the Grand Coulee Dam from which his song “Roll On Columbia Roll On” became famous. He wrote, recorded, and illustrated a book called “Songs To Grow On” for children. A biopic film “Bound For Glory” was made about him in 1976. Bob Dylan, in a 2024 film “A Complete Unknown” is shown playing “A Song For Woody” in the hospital where Guthrie was being treated for a brain disorder called Huntington’s Chorea, which he died from in 1967. ‘This Land is Your Land’ is frequently mentioned as a possible replacement national anthem:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining then I was strolling
In the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting and the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me.
Joey “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.
