A Politician and A General, pencil sketches by E. E. Cummings
Houghton Library, Harvard University
___________
TARGETS OF SATIRE
CUMMINGS’ TEMPERAMENT equipped him well to be a satirist. As his career developed, he made use of all its forms: invective, personal ridicule, burlesque, mimicry, parody, role playing, and verbal irony. In doing so, he employed all kinds of wordplay: puns, circumlocution, slang, dialect, double entendre, misspelling, comic rhyme, and absurd allusion—especially reference to patriotic songs, popular songs, advertising slogans, literary quotations, Latin phrases, proverbs, and nursery rhymes. For example, within a mere four lines, his epigram on Ernest Hemingway employs a number of these devices. The opening line mimics Tennyson’s “Cradle Song” from his poem “Sea Dreams”: “What does little birdie say/ In her nest at peep of day?” But a stanza from Longfellow’s “The Psalm of Life” hovers more maliciously over these lines:
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not the goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
The bull reference in line three was a reminder of Max Eastman’s devastating review of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon entitled “Bull in the Afternoon.’ The dialect in line three manages to attack Hemingway’s masculinity and the message of his recent writing (Cow thou art, to bull returnest).
A longer poem such as “POEM, OR BEAUTY HURTS MR. VINAL” makes use of a full range of satiric methods in its scatological send-up of the products of most American poets. It even includes an allusive Latin pun when the poets are called “throstles,” or song thrushes, the generic name for which is Turdus musicus.
The glorification of war with its attendant patriotic posturing was a continuing target of Cummings’ satire during both world wars. Curiously enough, however, he was also ready to stand up for oppressed nations and denounce the United States for failing to protect them. Russia’s attack on Finland in World War II was one occasion, but a more complicated situation arose when Russia invaded Hungary to put down the uprising of 1956. Cummings went into a fuming rage because the U.S. broadcasts over Radio Free Europe had encouraged liberation movements in Eastern Europe but then the U.S. government did nothing to help Hungary—nor did the United Nations in conclave do anything more than offer verbal protests. The result was the poem “THANKSGIVING (1956).”
Politicians were to Cummings mere salesmen of their programs and ready to stoop to any means for success. All presidents of the United States during his adult lifetime, from Wilson to Kennedy, were attacked in one satire or another. An especially hard-hitting example, “F is for foetus,” appears here in this section. (The scattered capital letters spell out FDR.)
Given his objections to groupism and collective action in society, it is no surprise to find Cummings opposed to Communism. But he had special reason for his hatred after his firsthand observation of the soul-smothering effects of the Soviet police state during a trip through Russia (holding a special “without party” visa) in 1931. His diary of this visit, revised to become his book Eimi, is his most important prose work and a milestone of political satire.
In the later part of his career, Cummings frequently descended into misanthropic moods that found expression in his poems. The last five poems in this section are representative. His hostility toward social conformity, technological development, and the precedence of mind over heart lies at the base of these works, most of them sonnets and all skillfully adapted to that form. In the mid-twentieth century, there was no need for the Wordsworthian cry to be raised, “Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour.”
a Woman
of bronze
unhappy
stands
at the mouth
an oldish woman
in a night-gown
Boosting a
torch
Always
a tired woman
she has had children
and They have forgotten
Standing
looking out
to sea
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent
war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
for,
my sister
isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera,my
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my
self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera,of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
“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 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.
ygUDuh
ydoan
yunnuhstan
ydoan o
yunnuhstan dem
yguduh ged
yunnuhstan dem doidee
yguduh ged riduh
ydoan o nudn
LISN bud LISN
dem
gud
am
lidl yelluh bas
tuds weer goin
duhSIVILEYEzum
plato told
him:he couldn’t
believe it(jesus
told him;he
wouldn’t believe
it)lao
tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes
mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or
not)you
told him:i told
him; we told him
(he didn’t believe it,no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell
him
F is for foetus(a
punkslapping
mobsucking
gravypissing poppa but
who just couldn’t help it no
matter how hard he never tried)the
great pink
superme
diocri
tyof
a hyperhypocritical D
mocra
c(sing
down with the fascist beast
boom
boom)two eyes
for an eye four
teeth for a tooth
(and the wholly babble open at
blessed are the peacemuckers)
$ $ $ etc(as
the boodle’s bent is the
crowd inclined it’s
the common man wants)
honey swoRkey mollypants
a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse
Me whether it’s president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn’t
important whether it’s millions of other punks
or just a handful absolutely doesn’t
matter and whether it’s in lonjewray
or shrouds is immaterial it stinks
a salesman is an it that stinks to please
but whether to please itself or someone else
makes no more difference than if it sells
hate condoms education snakeoil vac
uumcleaners terror strawberries democ
ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair
or Think We’ve Met subhuman rights Before
the way to hump a cow is not
to get yourself a stool
but draw a line around the spot
and call it beautifool
to multiply because and why
dividing thens by nows
and adding and(i understand)
is hows to hump a cows
the way to hump a cow is not
to elevate your tool
but drop a penny in the slot
and bellow like a bool
to lay a wreath from ancient greath
on insulated brows
(while tossing boms at uncle toms)
is hows to hump a cows
the way to hump a cow is not
to push and then to pull
but practicing the art of swot
to preach the golden mil
to vote for me(all decent mem
and wonens will allows
which if they don’t to hell with them)
is hows to hump a cows
(of Ever-Ever Land i speak
sweet morons gather roun’
who does not dare to stand or sit
may take it lying down)
down with the human soul
and anything else uncanned
for everyone carries canopeners
in Ever-Ever Land
(for Ever-Ever Land is a place
that’s as simple as simple can be
and was built that way on purpose
by simple people like we)
down with hell and heaven
and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us
(and Ever-Ever Land is a place
that’s measured and safe and known
where it’s lucky to be unlucky
and the hitler lies down with the cohn)
down above all with love
and everything perverse
or which makes some feel more better
when all ought to feel less worse
(but only sameness is normal
in Ever-Ever Land
for a bad cigar is a woman
but a gland is only a gland)
kumrads die because they’re told)
kumrads die before they’re old
(kumrads aren’t afraid to die
kumrads don’t
and kumrads won’t
believe in life)and death knows whie
(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance
every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love
red-rag and pink-flag
blackshirt and brown
strut-mince and stink-brag
have all come to town
some like it shot
and some like it hung
and some like it in the twot
nine months young
THANKSGIVING (1956)
a monstering horror swallows
this unworld me by you
as the god of our fathers’ fathers bows
to a which that walks like a who
but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy
announces night & day
“all poor little peoples that want to be free
just trust in the u s a”
suddenly uprose hungary
and she gave a terrible cry
“no slave’s unlife shall murder me
for i will freely die”
she cried so high thermopylae
heard her and marathon
and all prehuman history
and finally The UN
“be quiet little hungary
and do as you are bid
a good kind bear is angary
we fear for the quo pro quid”
uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps “i’m busy right now”
so rah-rah-rah democracy
let’s all be as thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
POEM,OR BEAUTY HURTS MR.VINAL
take it from me kiddo
believe me
my country,’tis of
you,land of the Cluett
Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint
Girl With The Wrigley Eyes(of you
land of the Arrow Ide
and Earl &
Wilson
Collars)of you i
sing:land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham,
land above all of Just Add Hot Water And Serve—
from every B.V.D.
let freedom ring
amen. i do however protest,anent the un
-spontaneous and otherwise scented merde which
greets one(Everywhere Why)as divine poesy per
that and this radically defunct periodical. i would
suggest that certain ideas gestures
rhymes,like Gillette Razor Blades
having been used and reused
to the mystical moment of dullness emphatically are
Not To Be Resharpened. (Case in point
if we are to believe these gently O sweetly
melancholy trillers amid the thrillers
these crepuscular violinists among my and your
skyscrapers—Helen & Cleopatra were Just Too Lovely,
The Snail’s On The Thorn enter Morn and God’s
In His andsoforth
do you get me?)according
to such supposedly indigenous
throstles Art is O World O Life
a formula:example,Turn Your Shirttails Into
Drawers and If It Isn’t An Eastman It Isn’t A
Kodak therefore my friends let
us now sing each and all fortissimo A-
mer
i
ca,I
love,
You. And there’re a
hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers,like
all of you successfully if
delicately gelded(or spaded)
gentlemen(and ladies)—pretty
littleliverpill-
hearted-Nujolneeding-There’s-A-Reason
americans(who tensetendoned and with
upward vacant eyes,painfully
perpetually crouched,quivering,upon the
sternly allotted sandpile
—how silently
emit a tiny violetflavoured nuisance: Odor?
ono.
comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush
what does little Ernest croon
in his death at afternoon?
(kow dow r 2 bul retoinis
wus de woids uf lil Oinis
flotsam and jetsam
are gentlemen poeds
urseappeal netsam
our spinsters and coeds)
thoroughly bretish
they scout the inhuman
itarian fetish
that man isn’t wuman
vive the millenni
um three cheers for labor
give all things to enni
one bugger thy nabor
(neck and senecktie
are gentlemen ppoyds
even whose recktie
are covered by lloyd’s
BALLAD OF AN INTELLECTUAL
Listen,you morons great and small
to the tale of an intellectuall
(and if you don’t profit by his career
don’t ever say Hoover gave nobody beer).
’Tis frequently stated out where he was born
that a rose is as weak as its shortest thorn:
they spit like quarters and sleep in their boots
and anyone dies when somebody shoots
and the sheriff arrives after everyone’s went;
which isn’t,perhaps,an environment
where you would(and I should)expect to find
overwhelming devotion to things of the mind.
But when it rains chickens we’ll all catch larks
—to borrow a phrase from Karl the Marks.
As a child he was puny;shrank from noise
hated the girls and mistrusted the boise,
didn’t like whisky,learned to spell
and generally seemed to be going to hell;
so his parents,encouraged by desperation,
gave him a classical education
(and went to sleep in their boots again
out in the land where women are main).
You know the rest:a critic of note,
a serious thinker,a lyrical pote,
lectured on Art from west to east
—did sass-seyeity fall for it? Cheast!
if a dowager balked at our hero’s verse
he’d knock her cold with a page from Jerse;
why,he used to say to his friends,he used
“for getting a debutante give me Prused”
and many’s the heiress who’s up and swooned
after one canto by Ezra Pooned
(or—to borrow a cadence from Karl the Marx—
a biting chipmunk never barx).
But every bathtub will have its gin
and one man’s sister’s another man’s sin
and a hand in the bush is a stitch in time
and Aint It All A Bloody Shime
and he suffered a fate which is worse than death
and I don’t allude to unpleasant breath.
Our blooming hero awoke,one day,
to find he had nothing whatever to say:
which I might interpret(just for fun)
as meaning the es of a be was dun
and I mightn’t think(and you mightn’t,too)
that a Five Year Plan’s worth a Gay Pay Oo
and both of us might irretrievably pause
ere believing that Stalin is Santa Clause:
which happily proves that neither of us
is really an intellectual cus.
For what did our intellectual do,
when he found himself so empty and blo?
he pondered a while and he said,said he
“It’s the social system,it isn’t me!
Not I am a fake,but America’s phoney!
Not I am no artist,but Art’s bologney!
Or—briefly to paraphrase Karl the Marx—
‘The first law of nature is,trees will be parx.’ ”
Now all you morons of sundry classes
(who read the Times and who buy the Masses)
if you don’t profit by his career
don’t ever say Hoover gave nobody beer.
For whoso conniveth at Lenin his dream
shall dine upon bayonets,isn’t and seam
and a miss is as good as a mile is best
for if you’re not bourgeois you’re Eddie Gest
and wastelands live and waistlines die,
which I very much hope it won’t happen to eye;
or as comrade Shakespeare remarked of old
All that Glisters Is Mike Gold
(but a rolling snowball gathers no sparks
—and the same hold true of Karl the Marks).
when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage—
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
—and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn—valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude—and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we’ll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind(and not until)
pity this busy monster,manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
—electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born—pity poor flesh
and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if—listen:there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;let’s go
Space being(don’t forget to remember)Curved
(and that reminds me who said o yes Frost
Something there is which isn’t fond of walls)
an electromagnetic(now I’ve lost
the)Einstein expanded Newton’s law preserved
conTinuum(but we read that beFore)
of Course life being just a Reflex you
know since Everything is Relative or
to sum it All Up god being Dead(not to
mention inTerred)
LONG LIVE that Upwardlooking
Serene Illustrious and Beatific
Lord of Creation,MAN:
of Whose compassionate digit,earth’s most terrific
quadruped swoons into billiardBalls!
(“fire stop thief help murder save the world”
what world?
is it themselves these insects mean?
when microscopic shriekings shall have snarled
threads of celestial silence huger than
eternity,men will be saviours
—flop
grasshopper,exactly nothing’s soon;
scream,all ye screamers,till your if is up
and vanish under prodigies of un)
“have you” the mountain,while his maples wept
air to blood,asked “something a little child
who’s just as small as me can do or be?”
god whispered him a snowflake “yes:you may
sleep now,my mountain” and this mountain slept
while his pines lifted their green lives and smiled
Jehovah buried,Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and Quick;
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek;
obey says toc,submit says tic,
Eternity’s a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hang in hock
who dares to call himself a man?
go dreamless knaves on Shadows fed,
your Harry’s Tom,your Tom is Dick;
while Gadgets murder squawk and add,
the cult of Same is all the chic;
by instruments,both span and spic,
are justly measured Spic and Span:
to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike
who dares to call himself a man?
loudly for Truth have liars pled,
their heels for Freedom slaves will click;
where Boobs are holy,poets mad,
illustrious punks of Progress shriek;
when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick,
Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can:
if Hate’s a game and Love’s a fuck
who dares to call himself a man?
King Christ,this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dares to call Himself a man.