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Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961)

The Age Demanded


              1The age demanded that we sing
              2And cut away our tongue.

              3The age demanded that we flow
              4And hammered in the bung.

              5The age demanded that we dance
              6And jammed us into iron pants.

              7And in the end the age was handed
              8The sort of shit that it demanded.

Notes

1] Gerogiannis notes that "The title and the rhythm are borrowed from the second part of Ezra Pound's `Hugh Selwyn Mauberly'" (139).


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Collected Poems of Ernest Hemingway, Number One of The Library of Living Poetry (Richard West, 1979); North York Public Library 821 H.
First publication date: February 1925
Publication date note: Querschnitt 5.ii (February 1925): 111.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1999.
Recent editing: 2:2002/4/17

Composition date: 1922
Composition date note: in Paris (Complete Poems, ed. Nicholas Gerogiannis, rev. edn. [1992]: 53)
Rhyme: ab cb dd ee


Other poems by Ernest Miller Hemingway