The Jingo Poems | Benjamin DeCasseres | Lt. Ed. of 33

The Jingo Poems gathers a remarkable, little-known chapter in the life of one of America’s most volatile essayists and poets. In these pieces—written amid the charged atmosphere of World War II—DeCasseres exchanged his earlier cosmic individualism for a blazing, patriotic rhetoric that celebrates enterprise, liberty, and the American self-image with almost theatrical fervor. Once circulated in newspapers, trade journals, and even the halls of Congress, these poems now stand as artifacts of wartime propaganda and personal conviction alike: kitsch and conviction intertwined. This booklet restores them to view for the first time in decades, offering readers a vivid glimpse of DeCasseres at his most grandiose and defiantly American.