Month: March 2008

Though not necessarily a favorite, cummings’ “147” somehow seemed appropriate on this fifth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq:

147

“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 generally don’t like ANTI-war poems because i feel almost ALL poems, at least modern poems, are anti-war. But, if you were looking for anti-war poems, cummings would be a good place to look. Although he volunteered as an ambulance driver in France during WWI he was imprisoned by the French for seditious writing.

What makes cummings more effective than most anti-writers is his sense of humor, which often does little more than quote those in favor of war, exposing the inherent irony. In fact, I wonder if cummings writes for The Daily Show?

It’s hard not to see the absurdity of slogans when they’re strung together like this, though some might not immediately recognize the irony in the first line until they see “…and so forth oh.” aFter all, NO one ends a prayer with “AND SO FORTH” because it immediately reveals how clichéd such phrases are.

It is a little sobering when we realize that it’s the “heroic happy dead” who have been acclaiming America’s glorious name “by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” because “they did not think” but “died instead.”

If it weren’t for those like this politician who finished his speech with “a glass of water” the voice of liberty might well be MUTE.

I was a little surprised to discover that I had marked this poem as one of my favorites the first time I read it long ago while in college. I suspect I must have liked it for very different reasons than i do now:

136

oDE

o

the sweet & aged people
who rule this world(and me and

you if we’re not very
careful)

O,

the darling benevolent mindless
He-and She-
shaped waxworks filled
with dead ideas(the oh

quintillions of incredible
dodderingly godly toothless
always-so-much-interested-
in-everybody-else’s-business

bipeds)OH
the bothering
dear unnecessary hairless
o

ld

As a college student I must have seen this as a rebellious statement, now I find myself worrying I’ve become that doddering old fool “filled with dead ideas.” It’s hard not to feel like a dinosaur when you go to your local Blockbuster and can’t find a single movie you really want to sit through. Is that really music they play on most local stations? No wonder the record companies are complaining about losing money.

I must admit that every time I look at some “dodderingly godly toothless/ always-so-much-interested-/ in-everybody-else’s-business” Republican explaining why we must Stay The Course i’m pissed that the Republican party is giving a bad name to us poor old white guys.

There’s certainly nothing particularly new about the ideas expressed in cummings’ “101” but I still love the way he says them, exhibiting both his endearing sense of humor and the ambiguity typical of his best poems.

You gotta love a poem that begins “Humanity i love you” and ends “Humanity i hate you.” Surely, somewhere between those two extremes must lie the truth, or, at least, something that will pass as the truth:

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

Those of us who’ve spent our lives trying to improve society (I’m pretty sure I wasn’t teaching for the money) seem oblivious to the fact that human nature is remarkably resistant to change. Although this poem was written at the beginning of the 20th Century, it certainly seems as true today as the day it was written.

The media, and, thus, society is fixated on Success and those who’ve attained it, no matter how many people they’ve betrayed on their trip to the top.

Even in a society as depraved as our own, “country,” “home,” and “mother” still seem to have the ability to launch songsters to the top of the pops ladder.

And judging from the popularity of some seriously dumb beer commercials, more than a few young people have pawned their “intelligence to buy a drink.”

It’s almost enough to make you question why you continue to love the human race, isn’t it?

There’s a surprising number of e.e. cummings’ poems that strike my fancy, but many are so well known it hardly seems worth the bother to present them here. What’s more, many involve Spring, and I’m beginning to wonder if my longing for Spring weather hasn’t altered my very taste in poetry.

Here’s a poem that I didn’t note the first time through, probably because I was so caught up with studying to become someone or something I wasn’t that it didn’t appeal to me:

                                       89

               let's live suddenly without thinking

               under honest trees,
                                  a stream
               does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling
               -water pursues the angry dream
               of the shore. By midnight,
                                               a moon
               scratches the skin of the organised hills

               an edged nothing begins to prune

               let's live like the light that kills
               and let's as silence,
                                           because Whirl's after all:
               (after me) love,and after you.
               I occasionally feel vague how
               vague i don't know tenuous Now-
               spears and The Then-arrows making do
               our mouths something red,something tall

I’m not a stream, and though at times I seem little more than a stream of thoughts, at this point in my life I can see the wisdom in living “suddenly without thinking/ under honest trees.” It’s too easy in this society to get caught up in the brain of “cleverly-crinkling-water,” caught up in the “Whirl” of activity. I don’t even have a job, but when i got home from a week-long vacation I found 125 emails waiting for me in just one of several email accounts, not to mention the thousand-or-so articles waiting to be read in my RSS reader.

In a world where you’re just as apt to be speaking to a person halfway around the world as to the person sitting next to you, Whirl seems ALL. No wonder some of us have trouble deciding whether we’re better friends with someone halfway round the world who you play Scrabulous with daily or the neighbor you haven’t talked to in six months.