Pure Poetry Week(s):
#1 – 2/23/2011 – Intro & Def Poetry Jam, by Riese
#2 – 2/23/2011 – Eileen Myles, by Carmen
#3 – 2/23/2011 – Anis Mojgani, by Crystal
#4 – 2/24/2011 – Andrea Gibson, by Carmen & Katrina/KC Danger
#5 – 2/25/2011 – Leonard Cohen, by Crystal
#6 – 2/25/2011 – Staceyann Chin, by Carmen
#7 – 2/25/2011 – e.e. cummings, by Intern Emily
Some people/teachers have told me that poetry is meant to be read aloud, but I’m pretty sure they forgot about e.e cummings when they said that. For example, you might say “a leaf falls on loneliness” aloud, but then you would miss this:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
e.e cummings is also really hard to read aloud because of his weird use of syntax. He’s kind of like Yoda but more sexual.
The first poem I ever read by e.e cummings was “i like my body” which you probably have read before if you’ve read poetry. Here it is:
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new
What really got me was the way words just seem to fall out of his mouth. Like he held his feelings deep down inside until he couldn’t contain them anymore and then they just spewed out of his fingertips onto the page, like muscles better and nerves more. He goes beyond frivolous language right to the root of things.
I don’t know very much about e.e cummings’ life. I don’t know if I want to. He likely had a purpose for writing each poem; he’s written war poems and satirical poems and love poems and all of the poems but sometimes they don’t feel like they have specific meanings, they just feel like words falling all over you. You might say “what the hell is the ‘shocking fuzz of your electric fur'” or “‘eyes big love-crumbs’ is not a thing that makes sense,” but you are thinking too hard. Don’t think. Just feel, and you might be transported to a place where your lover is stroking your sides, making the little tiny hairs on your body stand on end.
my love you are a bright mountain which feels.
you are a keen mountain and an eager island whose
lively slopes are based always in the me which is shrugging,which is
under you and around you and forever:i am the hugging sea.
The special thing about e.e cummings is that his poems are not actually a spontaneous burst of feeling. He’s just really, really good at making you think it is.
Like I said, e.e cummings has written a lot of different types of poems. But the poems you’re probably interested in are Erotic Poems. Written on the back: Many years ago the prodigious and famously prolific E. E. Cummings sat in his study writing and thinking about sex. How does that sound to you. Does that sound like something you might want to read. Well, go on.
worms are the words but joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts and thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
-time is a tree (this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
e.e. cummings <333
I should have done the same as you and not try to find out more about his life. I don’t remember what bothered me, but something did.
Now i lay(with everywhere around)
me(the great dim deep sound
of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and
what a gently welcoming darkestness–
now i lay me down(in a most steep
more than music)feeling that sunlight is
(life and day are)only loaned:whereas
night is given(night and death and the rain
are given;and given is how beautifully snow)
now i lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine)
something which nobody may keep.
now i lay me down to dream of Spring
i heart e.e.cummings the most.
I spent an entire semester studying e.e. cummings and dissecting his poems word by word. I thought I might be sick of him after all that time, but instead I came out of it even deeper in love with him and his work.
I think that means something about how awesome he is.
“but love is the sky and i am for you”
wow.
i love that phrase, “i am for you” #feelings
“Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death”
yes, E. E. Cummings. The first poems I ever fell in love with.
HA! JINX!
actually it’s a really fun one to read out loud, too.
Aah – one of mine first as well!
Love to read it out loud =D
buffalo bill is my favorite poem i have it memorized
ee cummings really is one of the best poets. He’s so playful, yet so thought-provoking. This one is a top ten:
she being Brand
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having
thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.
K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and
again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity
avenue i touched the accelerator and give
her the juice,good
(it
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and
brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.
stand-
;Still)
i also love e.e cummings because he’s so freaking snarky. he has such a wide range of poems. ahhh.
why must itself up every of a park
anus stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer “no”?
quote citizens unquote might otherwise
forget(to err is human;to forgive
divine)that if the quote state unquote says
“kill” killing is an act of christian love.
“Nothing” in 1944 AD
“can stand against the argument of mil
itary necessity”(generalissimo e)
and echo answers “there is no appeal
from reason”(freud)–you pays your money and
you doesn’t take your choice.Ain’t freedom grand
my favorite quote by cummings, i once used it in a paper i wrote about one of his coolest poems: cleopatra built
“poetry happens to be an art ;and artists happen to be human beings…As for a few trifling delusions like the ‘past’ and ‘present’ and ‘future’ of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple billion super mechanized submorons but they’re much too small for one human being…Every artist’s strictly illimitable country is himself…a human being who’s true to himself…is immortal ;and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.”
XIV is one of my favorite poems ever:
“pity this busy monster,manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victum(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh
and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if-listen:there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;let’s go”
“Progress is a comfortable disease” is one of my favorite groupings of words ever. EVER.
I love this one too. probably because I am a total bitch, one of the things I like about it is the way people completely misquote the final stanza (or well, most of it: “listen:there’s a hell/of a good universe next door;let’s go”, which gets quoted as like … aspirational (and it’s great for that, it’s beautiful) but I read it as more like: OK so now that we’ve fucked up this one, let’s move to the next one!
Also, Björk did this AMAZING cover of his poem It May Not Always Be So:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCUZ4d4xN8s
I love poems set to music. Thank you for sharing Björk’s cover. Other favorites of include Joni Mitchell’s rendition of Yeat’s Second Coming, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”: http://bit.ly/IjCxy and Loreena McKinnet’s version of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes: http://bit.ly/fNXPt
For Sarah Warner:
i carry your heart with me
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 you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(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
(here 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 the 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)
Edward Estlin Cummings
yep can’t forget about this. i love this poem will all my heart and i carry it in my heart
e.e cummings has been my favorite poet since…forever. I plan to get the lines
“i like my body when it is with your
body. its is so quite a new thing”
tattooed on my back. looooovvee him.
My introduction to e.e. cummings poetry was in grade 12 English Lit, when we read the funny “may i feel said he”. Haven’t read much other stuff, but this post was a good introduction to some of his other stuff.
may i feel said he
(i’ll squeal said she
just once said he)
it’s fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let’s go said he
not too far said she
what’s too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you’re willing said he
(but you’re killing said she
but it’s life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don’t stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you’re divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
I love Cummings, too, and especially did when I was a teenager & perhaps not quite so jaded. This poem especially (i think it is important to remember the moral):
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
this is beautiful
This is my absolute favourite of All Time.
“He’s kind of like Yoda but more sexual.”
I really wish this were the first time today I’d thought “Yoda” and “sexual” in the same sentence. I really, really do.
Oh, e e cummings. Love. “anyone lived in a pretty how town” was my seventh-grade discovery, though “what if a much of a which of a wind” threatens to be my favorite now.
even though I am atheist this one comes to me all the time (and it’s good to read aloud):
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings;and of the gay
great happening ilimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
that last couplet you guys. I can’t even.
Also my favourite lines from “anyone lived in a pretty how town”:
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
I went on this massive cummings kick last week so this is perfectly timed HE IS AMAZING.
Also Emily this post is really really good and gives me a lot of feelings, especially where you said that sometimes his sentences don’t appear to make sense with your reading-brain, but will if you read them with your feeling-brain. part of the reason some poets are so amazing is they seem to have a direct line to your feeling-brain that bypasses your reading-brain all together.
Also this: “The special thing about e.e cummings is that his poems are not actually a spontaneous burst of feeling. He’s just really, really good at making you think it is.” YES.
thanks tui!
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 you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(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
(here 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 the 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)
– e. e. cummings ~
Lovely..
What an awesome find…
It was indeed refreshing to one as I
I am inspired by the promise of requited love
I am aspired by the dissolute unrequited desire
Overall I was enthralled by the above contributions.
U made my day