E.E. Cummings Poetry

...that poem is everything i like abt eec...thanks qm1

............JEHOVAH BURIED, SATAN DEAD................
Jehovah buried,Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and Quick;
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek;
obey says toc,submit says tic,
Eternity's a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hand in hock
who dares to call himself a man?

go dreamless knaves on Shadows fed,
your Harry's Tom,your Tom is Dick;
while Gadgets murder squack and add,
the cult of Same is all the chic;
by instruments,both span and spic,
are justly measured Spic and Span:
to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike
who dares to call himself a man?

{excerpt from this poem by e.e.cumminngs}

WHEN SERPENTS BARGAIN


when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage -
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age

when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
- and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close


{two stanzas of this poem by e.e.cummings}

this(let's remember)day died again and
.................................................. .

this(let's remember)day died again and
again;whose golden,crimson dooms conceive

an oceaning abyss of orange dream

larger than sky times earth:a flame beyond
soul immemorially forevering am-
and as collapsing that grey mind by wave
doom disappeared,out of perhaps(who knows?)

eternity floated a blossoming


{part of this poem by e.e. cummings}

deciphering meaning in much of the poetry of e e cummings is all the more difficult without researching the man and trying to understand some of the connections that he was making. well schooled in traditional literary and poetic forms--he not only "graduated magna cum laude in Literature, especially in Greek and English" from harvard, he taught there. cummings was also a painter. his artwork, paintings, sketches and the like, far outweighing his poetry in sheer volume. as much fun as it is to read what people try to do with his poem "l(a)," setting a copy of the poem next to a copy of marcel duchamp's "nude descending a staircase" should provide an entirely different perspective on the man and his work. a book, e e cummings revisited, written by richard s kennedy is beyond insightful. along with several other authors, particularly poets, we do no small disservice to their work by not investigating as fully as possible just what they thought of their world and their art.

What a coincidence,

I have these questions about the poem I can't really answer...
could anyone help me??

1. Explain 'mud-luscious' (lines 2-3).
2. Explain 'puddle-wonderful' (line 10).
3. What meanings does 'wee' (lines 5 and 24) have?
4. Explain the shift from 'lame' (line 4) to 'goat-footed' (line 20).
5. What does the balloon-man represent for the children?
6. Explain the title.

Here is PART of the poem in just-

E.E. Cummings

(1894-1963)

in Just-


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and


....


I know maybe its sounds really lame, but english is not my first language and I'm studying literature now, I really do hope I could make it because I am going to try really hard.... :D

thx!

To SweetKaren: This is one of my favorites by e.e. You will find most of your answers in this collection of critical essays. Hope this was helpfull, but remember it's just a resource. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...ngs/injust.htm ..............quasimodo1

Thx for the link. It is helpful, but it doesn't answer all my questions (or is it?) I just read them once and I guess I should re read them to be able to digest all the information. Why cant people write in normal english lol. I would be really happy if someone could help me explaining it in a way I could understand it.

What I know so far
What does the balloon-man represent for the children? He's rendition of Pan, the god of the goatherds and shepherds.

And I can't even explaining the title of the poem?
I wonder If i will ever make it for next week exam:bawling:

Ok, about "in Just" by e.e.cummings...All his poems are titled by the first line, so it need not be interpreted or analyzed. Your mention of Pan (or the Faun) is probably something e.e. intended but the piece is an expression of delight in a moment, in a season...the old "slice of life" type poetry but with cummings' super-creative use of common words and expressions in brand new ways. It also celebrates childhood with it simple and pure feelings about experience. It is not the most complex thing he wrote by a long shot and you don't need to go at it like it is T.S. Eliot. Relax a little, it's not heavy poetry or philosophy. quasi

Hmm... I kind of understand it now. However I have 2 more questions if you dont mind.

Does 'wee' has meaning at all??
And if someone ask you about e.e cummings writing style, what would you answer??

Thanks a bunch!

onomatopoeia, if you have a dictionary, look up this word and it tells you about the "wee" expression (also meaning small and far away). If asked about e.e.cummings writing style, he created a whole new style for poetry which has changed contemporary poetry forever, it is exploratory, unique and kind of a new standard for poetic license. Anything else? quasi

He also doesn't really pay attention to the rules of conventional poems, like stanza and rhymes??

Thx anyway for now, im off to bed. Gonne back to study tomorrow

Taimi Olsen
LANGUAGE AND SILENCE IN THE ENORMOUS ROOM (1922)
[Spring 1 (1992): 77-86]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although The Enormous Room [1] is typically grouped with in Dos Passos' Three Soldiers and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms as fiction of World War I, E. E. Cummings created more than a "war" novel. The Enormous Room leads the modernist movement in rejecting genre traditions and adopting an innovative prose style. Cummings questions the assumptions of literary meaning by examining the effectiveness of various modes of communication, and he challenges traditional discourse through his unconventional and often disjointed poetic. For Cummings, the subject matter of The Enormous Room, the silent and "indescribable" essence of things, demands new methods of expression. Cummings reworks literary forms, linguistic signs and standard thematic structures, in order to express this silence.
As protagonist, narrator, and author, Cummings reconstructs reality through his assertion of linguistic freedom. Essentially, The Enormous Room concerns what Ferdinand de Saussure terms associative relationships in language. Normally, as Jameson explains, syntagmatic, or horizontal, meaning governs the sentence through "a succession of meaning-units or words in time." [2] Associative meaning, however, comes from outside the immediate context of the sentence. Cummings breaks out of sequential sentence structure through the use of typography, rhyme, and the associative meanings of words in order to change the nature of the sentence.
..........

http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Olsen1.html

This work of e.e.cummings is a result of his imprisonment in France during the Great War. There is much more to this story but one of the poems known by e.e.cummings and others in this prison/asylum is this one: THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET

by
Samuel Woodworth



--------------------------------------------------------------------------


How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollections present them to view !

The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild wood,

And every loved spot which my infancy knew;

The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,

The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;

The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,

And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well;

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-cover'd bucket, which hung in the well.


That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure;

For often, at noon, when return'd from the field,

I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,

The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield.

How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing !

And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;

Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,

And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.


How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,

As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips !

Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,

Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.

And now, far removed from the loved situation,

The tear of regret will intrusively swell,

As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,

And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-cover'd bucket, which hangs in the well.