The True-Blue American

The True-Blue American

BY DELMORE SCHWARTZ

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American, 

For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must 

Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,   

Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,   

Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity   

For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and   

Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah   

Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split 

He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it 

Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:   

Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;   

Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between; 

Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing 

         in his breast 

                  The infinite and the gold 

                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West. 

“Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American   

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed 

         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten, 

Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of 

         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, 

Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and   

         Shining in the darkness, of the light 

On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures, 

The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light 

Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,   

         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

Delmore Schwartz, “The True-Blue American” from Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge. Copyright © 1967 by Delmore Schwartz