Cummings Poetic Protest

One of the strongest ways to voice political opinion is in interpretive writing. It is universally known that history is an integral factor of literature; sometimes, certain political events inspire poets and authors to cleverly voice their opinions regarding the event in ways that require much ambiguity and analysis to completely understand the author’s intentions. Poetic protest is best shown with careful choice of word, punctuation, and capitalization.
The first example of political protest in poetry can be seen in “Buffalo Bills” by E. E. Cummings. Cummings dislikes the fame that Buffalo Bill received from his pointless fame. However, Cummings does give Buffalo Bill the credit he deserves, complimenting Bill on his horse riding skills, quick speed with a gun, and his elegance
E. Cummings uses no punctuation and little capitalization in “Buffalo Bills.” The word and line spacing is used to represent the excitement that Buffalo Bill had in his shows (Cummings, Buffalo Bills). The lack of word spacing in line 6 has the purpose of demonstrating the speed that Bill possessed. The only words capitalized were the names of people: Buffalo Bill, Jesus, and Mister Death (Cummings, Buffalo Bills). A well-known rule of poetry is to capitalize the first word of every line of poetry, but Cummings chooses to break this rule in order to place emphasis on the characters.
Another poem that displays political protest “My Sweet Old Etcetera” by E. E. Cummings. This poem helps show Cummings’ discontent with the glorification of soldiers in the war. While it is not wrong to honor those who fought for our nation, he is unhappy with the common goal that was in the hearts of many young men: to be soldiers and die for their country. He points out how sad it is that his own mother wished that he “would die bravely” (Cummings, My Sweet Old Etcetera). At the closure of the poem, the “deep mud” that the soldier is lying in is likely referring to trench warfare, possibly World War