2-21-07

I have read e.e. cummings in high school, but it was not until now that I have an appreciation for his image. I love his poems. I love how they have nice fluffy, pleasant surface meanings; then, when you are stumped with a strange derived spelling of a familiar word, you are drawn into the poem and eager to figure out the meaning behind his madness. You then realize that that he mixes good and bad, life and death with in his poems. I like the way he thinks about things like this. I am the kind of person who usually only sees the good things in life. I do not pay attention to subtle warning signs of things turning bad. e. e. cummings opens my eyes and shows me the whole picture of the good with the bad, the vitality with the death.

e. e. cummings goes about merging his content with his form by using alliteration, repeating words and groups of words in order to make the message more distinct and important. He uses words such as “spring” that then refer to things such as flowers, and fluttering eye lids which lead my mind to visualize butterflies. As he discusses these themes in his poem, another theme of mortem is intertwined. He uses words such as blood and death. Death is not associated with Spring time. Spring is usually associated with rebirth and vibrant lushness fostering growth, happiness and frolicking. He also uses spaces in order to give his reader time to visualize what he just described. For example,

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelinds’ flutter which says


we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

He gives the reader time to visualize how her eye lids are moving and possessing the fluttering. In this excerpt, you can also notice the importance of the speaker. He uses a lower case “ i” lessening significance. The most important part in this line is the emphasis not to cry. He uses his form to add meaning by making his reader stop at the strange punctuation or spelling and think about the importance of the image. The reader usually stumbles over different spellings of words and odd punctuation which draws their attention to why e.e. cummings uses this strange form.