next to of course god america i is one of the strangest sonnets ever written. It is a poem that delights in its own satire, that whimsically dances with cliches and pays little heed to punctuation. Overall, this is a rebel sonnet that ridicules the notion of patriotism, as delivered by an anonymous speaker.
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water The poem "next to of course god america i" alludes to the patriotism of a nation, namely the United States. It brings up the issues of what's a patriot and what in actually the norm of the average American citizen's response is to war and fighting?
The poem is a parody of a ‘speech’ to extreme patriots — the ranting monologue of ‘God-fearing’ America.
next to of course god america i is a 14 line sonnet with a rhyme scheme ababcdcdefgfeg and an inconsistent iambic meter (metre in British English) which helps vary the rhythmic stresses of the lines. Basically this is a hybrid English and Russian sonnet with a cumming's twist - a single line at the end.
The next line of the poem uses metaphor “thy sons acclaim you glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” it shows the innocence of the soldiers with “thy sons” and so the speaker shows a sort of frustration when replacing explicit words with “by gory by jingo by gee by gosh by gum”.
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.
poet e. e. cummingsThe American poet e. e. cummings (as he styled himself) was one of the most linguistically experimental mainstream modernist poets writing in the United States in the twentieth century, and his poem 'next to of course god america i' is a fine example of his innovative style.
next to of course god america i is a 14 line sonnet with a rhyme scheme ababcdcdefgfeg and an inconsistent iambic meter (metre in British English) which helps vary the rhythmic stresses of the lines. Basically this is a hybrid English and Russian sonnet with a cumming's twist - a single line at the end.
Examples of Allusions in the Poem "Next to of Course God America...Deceitful Patriotic Allusions. ... Deaf and Dumb Listening, Speaking. ... Keats, Lions and Lambs. ... Should Liberty Be Mute?
Here's a quick and simple definition: Free verse is the name given to poetry that doesn't use any strict meter or rhyme scheme. Because it has no set meter, poems written in free verse can have lines of any length, from a single word to much longer.
'the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls' by E. E. Cummings is about the differences in social classes, ignorance, and reality. The speaker judges the Cambridge women for the fiction they engage in and their lack of interest in the real world. This piece is one of Cummings' easiest to read.
Here's a quick and simple definition: Free verse is the name given to poetry that doesn't use any strict meter or rhyme scheme. Because it has no set meter, poems written in free verse can have lines of any length, from a single word to much longer.
'the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls' by E. E. Cummings is about the differences in social classes, ignorance, and reality. The speaker judges the Cambridge women for the fiction they engage in and their lack of interest in the real world. This piece is one of Cummings' easiest to read.
In the Works Cited entry, you start with the poet's name, followed by the title of the poem in quotation marks. Then include details of the source where the poem was published....Poem in a book.FormatAuthor last name, First name. “Poem Title.” Book Title, Publisher, Year, Page number(s).In-text citation(Rich)1 more row•Aug 9, 2019
A sonnet is a one-stanza, 14-line poem, written in iambic pentameter. The sonnet, which derived from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “a little sound or song," is "a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries," says Poets.org.
A slight change in rhythm as line 9 brings beauty out of the blue, repeated at the end of the line as Cummings splits beaut/iful in two. This not only allows the line to end with a rising beaut- but ties up the full rhyme later on with mute (in line 13).
Such a speech requires gulps of water, to aid digestion, to swallow all those cliches.
The speaker cuts short the anthemic lines perhaps because he is so used to giving similar speeches he cannot be bothered to finish them. He's trying to get through the speech in one go, get it over as quickly as he can.
And what about the first line, it ends with an i - does the reader stop before going on to the second line which begins with love? Not really. The enjambment (when a line has no punctuation at the end and sense continues on) means the reader should not take a pause but flow on as best they can into the next line.
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… Read More
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. His novel The Enormous Room (1922) was the first of his many literary attacks on authoritarianism and rabid nationalism.
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. The whole cloth of cummings’ text, written nearly a century after the patriotic hymns, weaves deliberate deceit, however; it is far from a dreamer’s vision. The orator speaks of the passage of centuries in line 5, adding “we should worry,” but his warning is lost in the flood of his political rhetoric. We should indeed worry if politicians like cummings' speaker retain their powers of persuasion.
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. His previous allusion contradicts him, however: The speaker, deaf to his audience, speaks to the dumb who cannot reply.
So, the speaker seems to be saying it was a good thing that she was brought from her homeland. "Mercy" brought her and it also "taught my benighted soul to understand," although what she understands is unstated. What's important is that the speaker feels like "mercy" in her life is, in a good way, responsible for taking her from home and enlightening her soul.
Why does she say "sought nor knew," instead of the other way around? She couldn't have sought something she didn't know about, so why not say, "I neither knew nor sought"? One reason is that, like all good neo-classical styled poets, she wants to keep her rhyme scheme going.