I really like his poems.His style is so different from most other poets.
I really like his poems.His style is so different from most other poets.
...And he was a fine artist too.Originally Posted by autumn rose
His unique style (e.g. with syntax and pronunciation) probably what distinguished him from other modern poets:
From
"if i love You"
if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries
if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream
....
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left. Oh and night there is the night; when a wind full of infinite space gnawed at our faces. Rainer Maria Rilke trans. by Mitchell
Although the quote from the Duino Eligies by Rilke may not seem to follow the Cummings discussion, I find they have some things in common. Just missed being contemporary, both used free verse, both used sensitive and romantic themes, both had an anarchist tendency. Cummings mixed with that Paris group made up of authors/poets like Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot, John dos Passos, and even William Faulkner. Cummings was also a painter and married to a professional photographer. All these associations must have reinforced his advant garde style including the unusual language patterns which he used like no other. RJS
I like him a whole bunch (direct to: my sig).
However, it seems to me that the copycats for his work annoy me more than usual.
Heike Marie;
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
[ee cummings]
Cummings- My second favorite poet right after Shakespeare. I LOVE his works, and cross my fingers to get a complete collection of them for my birthday.
When I read his stuff I connect with it so completely, I especially love:
if I should sleep with a lady called death
Humanity i love you
since feeling is first
may i feel said he
I have the last two memorized.
I'll post another good one that is short and sweet to glance at on occasion:
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I like Cummings because he is an individualist. He reminds me of Thoreau in his independent thought and his great appreciation for the true nobilty of people. He respected and loved life from his own vantage point, apart from the conventions of society.
I also like how well his poems are put together: on paper they look like they might wind up being disjointed modernist trash, but he always sneaks in rhythm and euphony to suprise you when the poems are read aloud.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate(for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows there is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Yep. I love him to pieces. I think he is one of those rare poets who is not only realistic, but he is also an optimist! With so much pessimistic poetry and prose tearing at our souls and hearts, its nice to know that ee cummings will always find some good in the often unfortunate reality of humanity.
In my sweet old etcetera, he exemplifies this. He may be about to do die in the trenches, but at least he is thinking about sex!
"dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)"
ee cummings
Another favorite:
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things--
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
One of my Favourites- maybe because I read in it a warning!
yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate...
yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate of a
somewhat obscure to be sure university spends
her time looking picturesque under
the as it happens quite
erroneous impression that he
nascitur
ee cummings
(Back after a long time- Sindhu-
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
Another favourite, due possibly to its uncharactericness
From "Ballad of the Scholar’s Lament"
When I have struggled through three hundred years
of Roman history, and hastened o’er
Some French play-(though I have my private fears
Of flunking sorely when I take the floor
In class),-when I have steeped my soul in gore
And Greek, and figured over half a ream
With Algebra, which I do (not) adore,
How shall I manage to compose a theme?
It’s well enough to talk of poor and peers,
And munch the golden apples’ shiny core,
And lay a lot of heroes on their biers;-
While the great Alec, knocking down a score,
Takes out his handkerchief, boohoo-ing, “More!”-
But harshly I awaken from my dream,
To find a new,-er,-privilege,-in store:
....
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
Love that one, I haven't read many other poems of his.
If you like one poem by E>E> than you will love all his work. This particular piece I read at my daughter's wedding. With good diction and grace, I hope. quasimodo1
any E.E. Cummings lover remember a piece with the line "...the little lame balloon man, whisteled far and wee..." been trying to find it, don't think it is the first line. quasimodo1
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