[1072] next to of course god america i
Guest poem submitted by Vivian, <vivian@>:
| next to of course god america i |
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
-- e. e. cummings
|
Here's one for the Fourth of July [1]. This poem speaks for itself and to us
(or at least to me) now and further comment is perhaps unnecessary. It's
amazing how some things never change -- or maybe life imitates art. Note the
rhymes (especially "beaut"/"mute"!) and that he is playing with sonnets
here.
Vivian.
[1] Sorry, we're late as usual - ed.
[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1072.html
From: Amit Chakrabarti <amitc@>
This shoots up to very high on my list of poems. Great submission!
-Amit
From: Sitaram Iyer <ssiyer@>
Being of course a poem of a sufficiently intriguing flavour etcetera a
google search etcetera revealed a few links etcetera.
some superb readings (mp3 and realaudio) by cummings himself:
http://www.salon.com/audio/poetry/2002/01/14/cummings/
and some miscellaneous commentary:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/nexttoofcourse.htm
From: "Soques, Kimbol" <Kimbol_Soques@>
Cummings is one of my favorites because of his freedom with/in all things
writing. A very big influence on my early poetry!
Since there were no bios attached I went looking -- there's one at
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings_life.htm
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings_life.htm> - a
nice precis taken from The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in
English. I remember that he was involved in left-wing causes, but I'm not
finding that easily.
I also ran across "decapitalization of E.E. Cummings" (
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm
<http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm> ) -- a set of correspondence
that claims that Mr. Cummings did not per se ever choose to stop using
capitals as a person (vs. his poet-hat).
Also - this page http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/
<http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/> has a nice list of more
works of Cummings', but I can't recommend the bio since it sounds
excruciatingly similar to the bio mentioned above but includes no citation.
(No plagarizing!)
From: chitowngrls82@
This is hilarious how true this is ringing to this very second. People feed off of propoganda and patriotic slogans. I mean how powerful is it to put those pieces together to see what they are. This piece does speak for itself, but I guess that is only if you have an open mind and are not apt to fall for political garbage.
--Boundary_(ID_wCexpg0vGz5PxEdrCM/3mw)
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is hilarious how true this is ringing to this
very second. People feed off of propoganda and patriotic slogans. I
mean how powerful is it to put those pieces together to see what they are.
This piece does speak for itself, but I guess that is only if you have an open
mind and are not apt to fall for political garbage.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
--Boundary_(ID_wCexpg0vGz5PxEdrCM/3mw)--