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.
let freedom ring
amen.

These lines come from E. E. Cummings’s satirical poem “next to of course god america i,” written in the interwar period and published in his 1926 poetry collection *is 5*. In the wake of World War I, Cummings—who had served as an ambulance driver and was briefly imprisoned in France—became sharply skeptical of official rhetoric, patriotic pieties, and mass persuasion. The poem mimics a bombastic public speaker (“take it from me kiddo / believe me”) and splices the language of civic hymnody (“my country, ’tis of thee,” “let freedom ring,” “amen”) with brand names and advertising slogans, reflecting the growing dominance of consumer culture and commercial media in 1920s America.

Cummings stages a collision between sacred national language and the profane chatter of commerce. By replacing the reverent “sweet land of liberty” with a catalog of trademarks (shirts, garters, collars, patent medicines, underwear), the poem suggests that American identity and “freedom” have been repackaged as commodities. The speaker’s slangy intimacy (“kiddo”) and insistence (“believe me”) parody salesmanship and political oratory alike, implying that patriotism can function like advertising: a set of ready-made phrases designed to produce assent. The closing “let freedom ring / amen” lands as a hollow benediction—an indictment of how civic ideals are invoked while being undermined by commercialism and manufactured consent.