next to of course god america i

I found Cumming’s poem rather interesting around this time in our nation; the words seem so contradictory to what we as Americans are beginning to believe in again and building as one, and it’s hard to decipher whether this is what Cummings’ believes or if this is just the story of a character he created. I felt that the first line of the poem already sounded like a mockery. Normally Cummings’ writing style does not consist of capitalization and some formal grammar, so at first it seems like it would be normal for America not to be capitalized in the first line. However, later in the poem Cummings’ uses capitalization after the quotation ends. This could bring up an argument that perhaps Cummings did not capitalize America to signify that he may not respect what it is we have been supporting as Americans when he wrote this. Perhaps that he’s trying to say that America is not as great as we make it out to be, hence the seemingly mocking tone that I believe is heard when reading the poem. The second and third lines further support the idea of mockery in the introduction of the National Anthem and “My Country Tis of Thee.” This may suggest that the songs that we associate most with America are silly, or an unnecessary boost to the ego of America. Cummings continues after “My Country” to state“tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry” (4-5) which seems to mean that the past is the past of what happened in our country, and that we no longer should worry about it. Cummings continues in the poem to add in his first initials in “languagE. E.ven” (6) and then mocks the way that God is praised by repeating different ways of saying “by God” without specifically stating God in lines seven and eight. Cummings then talks of the “heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter” (11-12) which suggests that these “happy dead” are those soldiers who gave their lives in battle. It seems to be that these soldiers foolishly sacrificed themselves as quick as a lion to a slaughter, as the metaphor states. This also shows that our nation through the eyes of the speaker is a foolish one in the way we rush into battle and sing praise of our great nation. The last line of the poem shows that there is a change in speaker, that one has been listening to another’s seemingly ramblings of America. The lines is very simple; “He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water” (14). It is the only line to use capitalization, and leaves the reader wondering who this narrator is that feels so strongly about America the way that they do.