Selections of poems in The American Tradition in Literature, include a balance between E. E. Cummings's lyric poems and his experimental works. "Thy Fingers Make Early Flowers Of" and "When God Lets My Body Be" are as eloquent as any other twentieth-century lyrical poem to be found in American literature. Contrast these with such experimental pieces as "I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big," thematically an anti-war piece, like "Plato Told," and "Buffalo Bill's," "My Sweet Old Etcetera," and "In Just -," a children's poem.