Norman Corwin's Seems Radio Is Here To Stay

In “Seems Radio Is Here to Stay” Norman Corwin writes, “You’d think that we were mobilizing moods/To make way for an epic chronicling a war;/But no” (3). “But no” this is not an epic, the narrator says, for we are only “here to talk of radio” (3), and yet the piece does have many of the features of a traditional epic, including its characterization, setting, narrative events, and style. Using this form allows Corwin to emphasize the sense of magnanimous importance that he felt the radio had in the world, using not only his writing but also the influence of the medium itself.

The basic elements of an epic poem are more-or-less fulfilled in “Seems Radio Is Here to Stay.” The epic hero of the poem is none other than the radio itself, the “miracle,

The Odyssey’s events span many years in locations the world over; Milton’s Paradise Lost goes further as to include the entire universe, from the beginning to the end of time. Corwin’s piece lives up to these expansive settings: radio reaches across America from “the seaboard in the East” all the way to “shores that face Japan” (2). This is further expanded as “microphonic whisperings” “go spinning round the globe…seven times,” and “thrust through the earth as clean/as would a guillotine” (4). Radio even reaches into the galaxy “against a sounding board of stars,” “down spillways of space,” and “across immensity” (4). The setting is vast not only in space, but also in time. The narrator travels through the past to pluck the likes of Walt Whitman, Beethoven, and Shakespeare from their graves to broadcast their works across the earth.

Corwin’s piece also has the element of poetic, elevated style, as exemplified by such phrases as “the fulminating thunderclaps of Jove” (4) and “magniloquent with love and hate, with sacrifice and sin…” (3). The style of the epic is even more evident in the fact that Corwin’s piece is of course meant to be listened to, not read. Traditional epic poetry is likewise very much rooted in the oral tradition, in recitation and performance. In a sense, Corwin’s piece revives this performative oral tradition which was originally used to transmit older forms of the epic such as