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About

Genius Annotation

One of E. E. Cummings’s many antiwar poems, “my sweet old etcetera” satirically contrasts the glorification of war on the home front with the actual life soldiers lead. As summarized by Rushworth M. Kidder in 1979:

[The soldier’s] “aunt lucy” is the newsmonger; his sister knits socks, shirts, and “fleaproof earwarmers”; his parents tout such abstractions as courage and loyalty; and all the while the soldier himself lies “in the deep mud” dreaming of “Your smile / eyes knees and of your Etcetera.” (Source: Modern American Poetry)

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