E.E. Cummings “next to of course god america i” is a poem about patriotism and the war. The poem starts off with the speaker being someone that is a patriot and feels strongly about America. As the poem progresses it takes a different approach becoming very sarcastic.
I think e.e. cummings' purpose in writing "next to of course god america i" was to show his frustration with our country. When I read this, I can almost …
‘next to of course god america i’ seems to be spoken from the heart of E.E. Cummings himself. He removes himself from the poem by using a speaker within a speaker, but the content of the poem directly corresponds with Cummings’ life experiences. As a volunteer during World War I, Cummings acquired a bitterness for war which he did not scruple to express.
Like many of e. e. cummings’ poems, ‘next to of course god america i’ is difficult to follow because he deliberately wrests language into new shapes, bending the rules of syntax, so that we begin (without a capital letter, as is his trademark style) with the declaration ‘next . to of course god america i / love you’, which essentially means ‘next to God (of course, he comes first), I love …
Jan 01, 2015 · E.E. Cummings “next to of course god america i” is a poem about patriotism and the war. The poem starts off with the speaker being someone that is a patriot and feels strongly about America. As the poem progresses it takes a different approach becoming very sarcastic.
With these lines of 'next to of course god america i', the speaker is again heavily sarcastic. He asks a sarcastic and yet rhetorical question, “What could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead?” In effect, he causes the readers to question the point of patriotism to a dead person.
Cummings' poem 'in Just' is a poem about spring. In the beginning of the poem, spring is starting and the children are called outside to play. It is the start of something new. However, the poem also represents a time of innocence in children and the suggestion that there is a change, adulthood, coming to them.Oct 12, 2021
The poem speaks about the happiness of children playing outdoor in the spring season. It also illustrates how nature provides us a chance to come out of our unruly routines and adore the bounties of nature. Similar to most poems, this one too talks about nature versus man.
Innocence. The children in "in Just-" are so innocent that they don't even bother to be offended by the fact that their names are strung together in clumps of words.
next to of course god america i#N#love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh#N#say can you see by the dawn’s early my#N#country ’tis of centuries come and go#N#and are no more what of it we should worry
One biographer describes Cummings as someone who “experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression.” This is clearly evident in this poem.
E.E. Cumming ’s status as an American by birth gives this poem all the more meaning. He has the authority to speak on the patriotism of the United States, because he is a U.S citizen by birth. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894.
The poem goes on to summon a number of earlier patriotic poems about the United States, such as Francis Scott Key’s ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ (better known as the US national anthem), specifically the opening line ‘Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light’ , and the patriotic hymn ‘ America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee) ’.
The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet is divided into two sections: an octave or eight-line section and a sestet or six-line section. But unlike a Petrarchan sonnet, which uses the same two rhymes (rhymed abbaabba) in the octave, cummings makes use of seven different rhymes, as we find in an English sonnet (rhymed ababcdcdefefgg ).
He worked in France in the ambulance corp, which later didn’t seem like such a great idea when he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Normandy on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities. When Cummings returned to the United States he was drafted into the army and served the 12th division.
Thus the poem by E.E. Cummings “next to of course america i” has a lot of meaning. The title shows faith, patriotism, and self-importance.
ee cummings, a pacifist, was imprisoned during World War One for his supposed disloyalty to America. He was also accused, falsely, of being a spy. After the war he moved to Paris where he wrote satirical poems.
Sonnets usually end with either a rhyming couplet or a rhyming quatrain. cumming’s poem does the latter. This is ironic, as sonnets are formal, structured and intelligently witty, whereas this poem is nonsensical gibberish — though of course also extremely intelligent.
The opening allusions in lines 1 through 3, from "The Star-Spangled Banner” (1814) and “America/My Country ‘Tis of Thee” (1831), are also used in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963.
Cummings' speaker uses an amusing contradiction that alludes to senseless babbling in line 6, as he speaks of “every language even deafanddumb.” He then proceeds in line 8 to hyperbolically allude to common folk/salt-of-the-earth clichés, sprinkled in his text like field fertilizer; “by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” is his attempt to find the right metaphor for his plain, simple audience, the more easily to appeal to them as a man of the people.
In line 9, the speaker asks rhetorically, “Why talk of beauty?” an allusion to Keats’ “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” as he drums up false sentiment for war, alluding hypocritically to the honor of casualties: “what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead” who, in a mixed metaphor, rush like “lions to the slaughter” rather than lambs.
Cummings’ final allusion in line 13, “should the voice of liberty be mute?” is also a rhetorical question, alluding to the “Voice of Liberty” broadcasts of FDR’s fireside chats before World War II; in truth, the voice of the speaker who feigns a love of liberty probably should be mute.
The speaker in "next to of course god america i" speaks of faith, nationalism, and sacrifice in glowing terms. He quotes American patriotic hymns but is so cynical in his presentation that he does not even bother to finish his quotations.
Although the subject of the poem concerns political rhetoric, the concepts of speech and silence permeate the poem at multiple levels. There are 13 lines of speech and one line of silence; whereas the speech is an unbroken stream of noise, the line of silence is deliberately punctuated.
In ineptly attempting to praise the death of the soldiers, the speaker in the poem highlights the tragedy of their deaths. The ideas they fight and die for, as expressed by the speaker, are a string of half-formed nonsense, mouthed by someone who does not care enough to even finish his sentences.