[what
if a much
of a which of a
wind]
[O sweet
spontaneous]
[l(a]
[since feeling
is first]
[s(]
[all nearness
pauses, while
a star can grow]
[next to of
course god
america i]
My favorite
e e cummings
quotes
e.e.cummings
links |
Like poetry itself, it took a long, long time for me to see e e
cummings. Yet, like poetry itself, when I did I was overtaken in such
a way that I do not believe my life will ever be the same.
Cummings, as is insultingly obvious, is different. And difference, I
believe, is what I didn't like about him...my brain is by nature lazy,
just like anybody else's. I didn't want to look at a smoosh of letters
and try to derive some sort of weird misunderstood meaning from them.
Cummings became the one and only poet I'd ever come in contact with
whom I claimed to hate.
And now, of course, I know better. Sometime in September this year,
I got into one of my "withdrawfromtheworldandreadaLOTofpoetry"
moods. And who was there to greet me in my American Lit book, who was
there to sneer at my face and tease, "I told you so!" in my
Anthology of American Literature? Heck, blindly enough, what the heck
was all over the e e cummings book I had bought but never read? Poems.
By e e cummings.
Actually, I've grown so comitted to cummings that I've not only
idolized him here, I have written these poems out and posted them
around my room. It's kind of like, you're walking around my room, and
hey! it's a poem.
I realize, now, that cummings embraces and does not release the very
soul of poetry. He's the core of it all. Now, I love the way his lines
are broken up, and how he uses crazy punctuation. It's like there's a
hidden message for you to find, especially in his ones that begin with
parentheses. |
what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie,
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man.
what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring
what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of it's grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't:blow death to was)
—all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live
menu
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
menu
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
menu
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other:then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
menu
s(
these out of in
finite no
where,who;arrive s
trollingly
:alight whitely and.
)now
flakes:are;guests,of t
wi
ligh
t
menu
all nearness pauses,while a star can grow
all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing and the peaceful hills
(not where not here but neither's blue most both)
and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day's death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise
goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon.
Times a strange fellow;
more
he gives than takes
(and he takes all)nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing,gaining
—love!
if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to(see?)begin
menu
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim thy glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
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e e cummings quotes
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