His exalted vision of life and love is served well by his linguistic agility. He was an unabashed lyricist, a modern cavalier love poet. But alongside his lyrical celebrations of nature, love, and the imagination are his satirical denouncements of tawdry, defiling, flat-footed, urban and political life--open terrain for invective and verbal inventiveness. He trained his ear on the rhythms of American speech: he attacked the inauthentic and the manipulative; he twisted overused words into punning submission; he mimicked familiar public slogans in despairing but vigorous poems, such as the justly celebrated "next to of course god america i/love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth ... ," and, from "POEM, OR BEAUTY HURTS MR. VINAL":
take it from me kiddo
believe me
my country, 'tis of
you, land of the Cluett
Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint
Girl With The Wrigley Eyes(of you
land of the Arrow Ide
and Earl &
Wilson
Collars)of you i
sing: land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham,
land above all of Just Add Hot Water And Serve--
from every B.V.D.
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