“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

I think this is one of Cummings’s most accessible poems, because he avoids some of his punctuation tricks that scare people. The concept is simple: The poem is a strangled jingoistic line delivered by a sweating politician following American deaths. What’s incredible about this poem, what made me spit beverage when I first realized it, is this: Despite having a very modern, unique feel to it, this poem is a perfect sonnet. Fourteen lines, very nearly iambic pentameter (though it’s broken, some passages here fit the form splendidly), and the lines all rhyme, yet it goes unnoticed because the poem works so well within its form. It even followers the slightly more obscure sonnet convention of having a “turn” on the ninth line: The first eight lines are merely regurgitated political lines mashed together into a poem, then on the ninth line the topic turns to the dead. The rhyme pattern mirrors this, by going from an ABAB pattern to an ABCBAC.

via Rory Marinich’s journal.