American Modernism Poetry
“Poem, Or Beauty hurts Mr. Vinal,” by e.e. cummings is a modernistic poem about the disarray of American culture due to recent shifts in the economy and the interest society placed on materialistic goods. Cummings is able to display modernistic themes such as stylistic innovations, less emphasis on the authority of one individual, freer expression of political matters by denouncing America’s emphasis on materialism and capitalism using untraditional literary style and political allegory.
The structure Cummings uses in this poem is everything but traditional. Irregular lines, broken up words, nonsensical grammar, and unusual syntax are all present in this work. Lines 36 through 41 display all said examples. us now sing each and all fortissimo A- mer i
ca,I love, You.
(“cummings” 36-41)
The breaking up of a single word into four separate lines shows cummings has a specific style that breaks traditional…show more content… The poem consists of popular privately owned brand names mixed with meaningful American history. The quote “land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham” (“cummings” 11) pairs one of the nation’s greatest presidents to the creator of a women’s ailment drug, as if they were equal. This is a mockery of how important the nation viewed products, business owners and the authority of individuals during this time. To compare Lincoln to Pinkham is absurd, however the nation viewed their contributions as equal due to its focus on capitalism and materialism. Additionally, the nation’s politics were also centered on capitalism, by mocking it cummings also demonstrates freer expression in political matters. Cummings is able to put in perspective two main concepts of modernism, the decline of the nation due to capitalism and freer expression in political matters by comparing the two