The poem “next to of course god america I” is one of the most sarcastic pieces I have

ever read. When reading the title for the first time, I imagined the poem would be a patriotic
speech, glorifying the image of God and America. However, when I got to the second line I
realized that wasn’t actually the theme of the poem. The author’ s objective is to make the
readers reflect on patriotism and if it is really worth it being patriotic. That can be seen in line
4, when the author mentioned “centuries come and go and are no more of what of it we
should worry”; I interpret that he believes that life is too short to be patriotic, it is not
something we should be worrying about. Two other lines that express his sarcasm are 10
and 11. In line 10 he asks “what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead”; I
believe the author thinks that the patriotism of soldiers is not worth it, since their lives are
more important than patriotism. In line 11 he compares the soldiers to lions going into
slaughter, creating a metaphor to make his point of view more impressive. As far as I can
see, the shift in the tone is located in the first two sentences. I believe so because the author
begins being extremely patriotic and with the lyrics of a patriotic song, however, when he
mentions “and so forth on” he shows to the readers that he forgot the lyrics and isn’t really
patriotic. When using a great amount of run-on sentences, I believe the author intends to
show a continuous idea, just as if someone was actually speaking what he wrote. After
reading the entire piece, I understood that the title was actually a sarcastic view on
patriotism, and not a patriotic speech. To be completely honest, I agree with Cummings in
some ways. Even though being proud of your land is great, I do agree with the author when
he says that patriotism is not worth your death and when he implies we have more important
things to worry about.