Modernist poet Edward Estlin Cummings (pseudonym E.E. Cummings) uses several poetic structures in "Buffalo Bill's" and "next of course to God America i" to draw the reader's attention to the deeper meaning deep behind the words. Cummings experiments with capitalization, punctuation, and line breaks to thinly veil his personal opinions with humor and disorganization. Through his unique poetic style, Cummings breaks away from traditional poetic standards to express his views on love, grief, and commercialized American culture. Modernist literature is often characterized by its reflections on the brutality of war, alienation and instability, and stream-of-consciousness narratives. The work of an insightful experimental modernist, Cummings' poems often revolve around themes of cruelty and loneliness, which stem from his experience in a French prison camp during World War I, but reinforce his originality in the face of such adversity. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Susan Cheever, a family friend of the Cummings, describes E.E. Cummings' distinctive brand of Modernism as having three parts: "The first was the method of using sounds instead of meanings to connect words to the reader's feelings. The second was the idea of ​​eliminating all unnecessary things to bring attention to form and structure: the skeleton of a work, previously hidden, would now be exuberantly visible. The third aspect of modernism was the embrace of adversity.” (Vanity Fair par. 9) As the journalist explains, Cummings uses his poetry to connect to his audience and bring a deeper understanding of himself and the prevailing social issues, blends his style of personal writing with modernist themes to bring an element of creativity into reality. "Buffalo Bill's" (1920), E.E. Cummings uses the famous American cowboy William "Buffalo Bill" Cody to show his distaste for false heroes and their ties to the materialism. In the first two lines, the narrator begins with “Buffalo Bill's deceased” which immediately establishes the cowboy as no longer functioning (lines 1-2). The word deceased takes up its own line, setting the tone of the poem, making his death impassive using a word that should be more appropriately applied to a machine. Next, Cummings describes the cowboy as a “handsome man” who rides a “stallion silver and smooth as water” and eventually dies (lines 4-5,8). The narrator proceeds to comment on his disappearance and asks, “how do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death” (line 10). The narrator describes his attractiveness and talent before revealing his death to explain how flashy heroes cannot be trusted. Even a cowboy as courageous as Buffalo Bill will not 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 famous for his Wild West shows and who made money imitating the Western dream who eventually dies and takes his legacy with him. As Cummings reduces Buffalo Bill from a popular celebrity who can shoot "one two three four pigeons just like that" to a mere "blue eyed boy," he strings words together, changing how the reader focuses on the cowboy's quick actions versus his innocent eyes (line 6, 10). By leaving a question mark outside line 10, Cummings makes his question to Mister Death open-ended and open to interpretation; Buffalo Bill died bravely as a hero or will be.