they died instead

When I first read the E. E. Cummings poem, I was intrigued by the appearance and sound of the words as they tumbled across the page in no apparent order. Unfortunately, I was so caught up in the absurd look and feel of the poem, that I had difficulty finding its meaning. After breaking it up into fragments and inserting various punctuation marks of my own, I was able to see a kind of path through the poem. I love how it begins with well-known patriotic phrases (“land of the pilgrims’,” “oh say can you see,” etc.) that become more and more interwoven with some interjections of the speaker, until finally the speaker forgets about pretending to be patriotic, and he instead focuses on saying what’s on his mind (instead of what most people expect to hear in a poem about America). This defiance of tradition and expectation is mirrored in the poem’s structure, which begins with the typically-rhymed quatrains of an English Sonnet, and ends in a sestet of the Italian Sonnet type. However, this last sestet does not seem to follow the usual rhyme scheme, and instead runs: FGFEG. This unusual and abrupt break with traditional form catches the reader off guard (especially if they, like myself, let the first eight lines kind of run together as just so many incongruous sounds), and thus forces them to pay more attention to these last six lines.

I also love how saucy the speaker is – it makes him seem more human to me. His interjections (“of course,” “and so forth,” “what of it,” etc.) are welcome interruptions in the monotonous drone of cliché nationalistic phrases (and who doesn’t enjoy the cheekiness of Cumming’s insertion of his own initials into the center of such a controversial poem?). The very last line (“He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water”) adds to the speaker’s humanness. I picture his gulp of water as an embarrassed sort of action: a last refuge before the meaning of his unpatriotic outburst sinks in. His string of euphemisms (“by gorry… by gum” – which are all more polite substitutes for “by God”), which follow his initial and ironic praise of America and her patriots, leads perfectly into the “turn” of the poem: where he finally dispenses with all patriotic pretense and rails against the injustice of the system (of the government and perhaps even the blind patriotism so prevalent throughout the United States). “why talk of beauty,” indeed – how can we possibly know, or possibly dare to presume, that the dead are happy? The “voice of liberty” shall certainly be mute until we can speak for our dead, our lions that were dragged like lambs into the hellish chaos of our wars.