E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) is best known as a playfully, radically innovative poet, which he was. But he was also a politically engaged one. His first big published work was The Enormous Room (1922), an autobiographical novel about his imprisonment in a French World War I concentration camp; Cummings served in an ambulance corps, but then he and a friend also serving were accused of sedition because the friend’s letters expressed pacifist views. Eventually he was released and sent home.
“i sing of Olaf” was first published in his collection ViVa in 1931, the same year in which Cummings made a six-week visit to the Soviet Union. It is the first obscene poem in the anthology, and the first avant-garde one, suggesting that the large modernist changes in form and decorum mattered even for politically engaged writing. The poem is also the first in the anthology to depict a war resister beaten to death and not just threatened with it.
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but—though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments—
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds, without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but—though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat—
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.