Contrast Between Owens and Cummings

Cummings vs. owen poetry comparison
By Charline Richard

It is clear to me that the themes of these poems are both talking about war. The poem Cummings wrote is a satire on political arrogance and uses the exploitation of patriotism to justify conflict. This poem takes on the form of a sonnet and uses little punctuation. I noticed Cummings used all lowercase lettering for the poem and unusual grammar. There are also two voices one being of the first person politician and the second voice being a third person observer. Owens poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. Owens poem is also understood to be two sonnets strung together, or the combination of two sonnets. In one contrast is that in Owens poem the narrator is telling about the horrors of the war directly. He seems to just come right out and say frankly that dying for your country is an evil lie. The narrator himself is a soldier and is in immediate danger. Owens winds up praising the men who fell for the evils of the lie – dying for their country. I also see Owens as a politician but Cummings, the writer shows us the evils of war by using an unsympathetic narrator – someone who won’t die for his country, but will send you and I to do it for him. Both of the poems are alike in subject matter, the atrocities of war. They share a common idea by the authors. The style and tempo of the poems are obviously different. Owens has a more piercing, pluck at your heart strings, action packed dreadful type of feel to it. Cummings poem has a very sarcastic tone about it. Such sarcasms comes out in the line “what can be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead” His sarcastic tone comes across as being annoyed by society who are blind to the patriotic values. He wants his readers to be aware of their own sense of patriotisms. I think if owns and Cummings were to have a discussion about war, they would generally agree about the lies of dying for your country is not as glorified as many