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Essay / Behind the Words of EE Cummings
Modernist poet Edward Estlin Cummings (pen name EE Cummings) uses various poetic structures in "Buffalo Bill's" and "Besides of course God America i" to attract attention of the reader on the deeper meaning. behind the words. Cummings experiments with capitalization, punctuation, and line breaks to lightly veil his personal opinions with humor and disorganization. Through his unique poetic style, Cummings departs from traditional poetic standards to express his views on love, pain, and commercialized American culture. Modernist literature is often characterized by its reflections on the brutality of war, alienation, and instability, as well as the narrative stream of consciousness. The work of an insightful experimental modernist, Cummings's poems often revolve around themes of cruelty and loneliness, which stem from his experience in a French prison camp during the First World War, but which reinforce his originality in the face of a such adversity. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essaySusan Cheever, a close family friend of the Cummings, describes EE Cummings' distinct brand of modernism as having three parts: " The first was the method of using sounds rather than meanings to connect words to the reader's feelings. The second was the idea of stripping away anything unnecessary to draw attention to form and structure: the once-hidden skeleton of a work would now be exuberantly visible. The third facet of modernism was the acceptance of adversity” (Vanity Fair par. 9). As the journalist explains, Cummings uses his poetry to connect with his audience and allow them to better understand themselves and common social issues. In some of Cummings' most popular works, he mixes his personal writing style with modernist themes to bring an element of creativity to reality. "Buffalo Bill's" (1920), EE Cummings uses the popular American cowboy William "Buffalo Bill" Cody to show his distaste for false heroes and their links to materialism. In the first two lines, the narrator begins with "Buffalo Bill gone," which immediately presents the cowboy as no longer functioning (lines 1 and 2). The word deceased takes its own line, setting the tone of the poem by describing his death with a word that should be more appropriately applied to a machine. Next, Cummings introduces the cowboy as a “handsome man” who rides a “smooth silver stallion” and who ultimately dies (lines 4-5,8). The narrator continues to comment on his death and ask questions: “How do you love your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death” (line 10). The narrator describes his attractiveness and talent before revealing his death in order to explain how flashy heroes should not be trusted. Even a courageous cowboy like Buffalo Bill won't be protected by his ability to please the crowd when the market no longer needs him. Buffalo Bill exists to be another American failure; a man who was famous for his Wild West shows and made money imitating the Western dream who eventually died and carried his legacy with him. As Cummings reduces Buffalo Bill from a popular celebrity who could shoot "one two three four pigeons like that" to just "a boy with the blue eyes," he strings the words together, changing the way the reader focuses on the rapid actions of the cowboy in relation to his innocent eyes (line 6). , 10). By leaving a question mark outside line 10, Cummings makes his question to Mister Death open and open to interpretation; Buffalo Bill »..