What is the author's message in Cummings' poem "next to god of course america i"? ...

This poem is an excellent example of Cummings’ irony. As the last line indicates, the “speaker” is actually a political speaker, jamming together many empty clichés (“land of the pilgrims”, “dawn’s early,” etc.) to “sell” his/her political loyalty and pro-war stance. The way Cummings uses a convoluted syntax and grammar and missing punctuation (“the dawn’s early,” “they did not stop to think they died instead,” etc.) makes his point so clearly—these empty speeches are void...

This poem is an excellent example of Cummings’ irony. As the last line indicates, the “speaker” is actually a political speaker, jamming together many empty clichés (“land of the pilgrims”, “dawn’s early,” etc.) to “sell” his/her political loyalty and pro-war stance. The way Cummings uses a convoluted syntax and grammar and missing punctuation (“the dawn’s early,” “they did not stop to think they died instead,” etc.) makes his point so clearly—these empty speeches are void of real meaning, void of honesty, empty of actual content. Linguists refer to this language as “utterances without speech act,” meaning that words can be put together without content, without a “message-receiver” intent. The poem descends to anti-war, anti-heroism rhetoric (“these happy heroic dead”). The whole poem must be understood as an ironic statement about the rhetoric that disguises war and patriotism as some heroic moment in a soldier’s life. You might enjoy also Cummings’ novel “The Enormous Room,” which continues this theme.