ee cummings - what am i missing?

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

I have been reading a good amount lately of ee cummings - while i enjoy a good deal of his work at times i am just, well, curious to how some of his stuff made it to the light of day. Take this:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15402

if i wrote this and submitted it to anywhere in the world, i dont see it being published... ever. anywhere. So is it a "good poem" because it was written by ee cummings and only when written by ee cummings, or is this a good poem if written by johnny nobody.

scarletpeaches · Feb 11, 2009

I am not a fan.

That is all.

*coughemperor'snewclothescough*

trickywoo · Feb 11, 2009

I haven't read much of his poetry, but I love this one:

http://plagiarist.com/poetry/284/

veinglory · Feb 11, 2009

Grasshopper is a fun and playful poem in a format that was highly unusual at the time. Not all of his works have the same goal, I take this one as an 'amuse bouche'.

Feiss · Feb 11, 2009

See, what you don't understand Casey, is that he was using form over art, it really represents the disillusionment of the youth of his time, and also, he must have felt the pressure of fame, and the expectation of creation, all that added to the fact that ee had just had a bean burrito, thus causing him gastric gassiness, leading to the floaty, burpy quality of the words.

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T REALIZE THAT, GEEZ.

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

Don't get me wrong, there are many poems of his that i really enjoy and personally have learned a good deal from reading his work, i just feel that there are some of his poems however that are sub par, ones written to push the envelope, that are just really really bad and are only known because he wrote them, not because of their poetic contributions. To me, when i read some of the great poets i always think to myself if my best poem was halfway as good as this poets worst, i would be happy. I guess for ee cummings i dont feel that way.

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

@Feiss: You are right! I am a total moron and shall never read another poem again

how can i be so blind to your most accurate interpretation

scarletpeaches · Feb 11, 2009

I prefer Owen and Betjeman. That probably makes me a prole.

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

I am a huge Owen fan - I only wish he had been given more time to write -

veinglory · Feb 11, 2009

I think variability is only natural. When a poet reaches a certain level of fame his entire corpus is preserved rather than each work on individual merit.

But I still like this one as I feel it deliberately punctures the pretentiousness of the culture he was working in at the time.

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

But to your point Veinglory, what i was wondering is that if anyone else besides ee cummings wrote that, would it have just been discarded - did it only get accepted because it was him that wrote it and people respect and expect that from him vs if say robert frost put that out people would be confused and wonder what drug he was on -

Stew21 · Feb 11, 2009

He crossed over occasionally from meaningful words to poetic "events".

I prefer the meaningful words, too.

A. Hamilton · Feb 11, 2009

I recently opened a book of cumming's poems and liked it much more than I expected. somehow his odd line breaks and peculiar use of grammar speaks to me, adds a twist that I see as beautiful. I've bookmarked a few favorites that I know I will return to often.
I think that any poet will have a share of poems that just don't hold up in quality, but those works manage to get slipped into larger collections. perhaps the poet himself is partial to the piece and insists. and of course one who already is established will have more say in these decisions.

dclary · Feb 11, 2009

Each of us have poems where we push beyond our normal voice and find the deeper, next step in our development as poets. Like Picasso's first forays into cubism these are often very different than the form we will eventually settle in, but we experiment anyway, because that's our nature.

I don't think this would have sold only because ee cumming wrote it. It would have sold if *any* established artist of the time had written it.

But that's the way it's always been. Sell what they want you to sell first. Sell them everything else after that.

A. Hamilton · Feb 11, 2009

I was thinking a little more about his grasshopper poem, and while it may seem very odd to most, and not particularly poetic in the warm fuzzy sens,it certainly speaks to his style and thus a significant piece to include in his work.
ever played with one? they hop, in spring, and at any given point they could be any where, and certainly not where you expect them. cummings conveyed this. clever really.
not a poem that I would even bookmark, but it does entice a grunt of glee from me when I stumble upon it.

Feiss · Feb 11, 2009

P.H.Delarran said:
I was thinking a little more about his grasshopper poem, and while it may seem very odd to most, and not particularly poetic in the warm fuzzy sens,it certainly speaks to his style and thus a significant piece to include in his work.
ever played with one? they hop, in spring, and at any given point they could be any where, and certainly not where you expect them. cummings conveyed this. clever really.
not a poem that I would even bookmark, but it does entice a grunt of glee from me when I stumble upon it.

hehe, a grunt

Epicurean · Feb 11, 2009

caseyquinn said:
I have been reading a good amount lately of ee cummings - while i enjoy a good deal of his work at times i am just, well, curious to how some of his stuff made it to the light of day. Take this:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15402

if i wrote this and submitted it to anywhere in the world, i dont see it being published... ever. anywhere. So is it a "good poem" because it was written by ee cummings and only when written by ee cummings, or is this a good poem if written by johnny nobody.

http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/issue9/Webster9.htm

"The first, the famous grasshopper poem, visually and verbally scrambles the letters of the grasshopper's name in three different ways, turning a common insect into three exotic beasts. The first scrambled beast, the "rpophessagr," is in lower case with each letter separated by a hyphen. The second, a "PPEGORHRASS," is all in caps with no intervening punctuation. The third specimen, a ".gRrEaPsPhOs)" (grreaps-phos), begins with a period and thereafter alternates lower case with capital letters. In this third version, a mostly reversed, mostly upper-case "hOPPER" sticks out of the lower-case "grashs." The most obvious function of these rearrangements is signaled by the (not rearranged but estranged) text of the poem, which minus the three exotic beasts, reads, "who as we look up now gathering into a The leA!p:S arrIvIng to rearrangingly become ,grasshopper;". (Just like a grasshopper to split an infinitive.) The seemingly arbitrary use of spacing, capitalization, and punctuation shows, or better, re-enacts the seemingly arbitrary leap(s) of grasshopper. Far from using the pathetic fallacy, Cummings instead attempts to present the life-essence of "grasshopper" though a formal visual and verbal patterning of words and letters. Or perhaps he takes the pathetic fallacy to an extreme: instead of humanizing the grasshopper by writing something like "the grasshopper's erratic, willful, athletic leap," Cummings presents the otherness of the insect by deforming that most distinctive human invention, language."

ee cummings own notes on the poem:

scarletpeaches · Feb 11, 2009

If a poem's explanation is longer than the poem itself, then I despair, I really do.

In fact, if a poem needs an explanation at all, I despair.

Epicurean · Feb 11, 2009

scarletpeaches said:
If a poem's explanation is longer than the poem itself, then I despair, I really do.

In fact, if a poem needs an explanation at all, I despair.

Sometimes its needed for an appreciation of the poem.

To answer caseys question: So is it a "good poem" because it was written by ee cummings and only when written by ee cummings, or is this a good poem if written by johnny nobody.

The second one.

caseyquinn · Feb 11, 2009

To me by his own definition qualifies the poem as a visual art with words more then a poem - to me poetry is meant to be read out loud - this obviously can't be (at least with any value) -

scarletpeaches · Feb 11, 2009

Epicurean said:
Sometimes its needed for an appreciation of the poem.

I've read the explanation and I still don't appreciate it. *shrugs*

I'd rather read poetry that spoke for itself. User manuals belong with washing machines, not poems.

Marian Perera · Feb 11, 2009

P.H.Delarran said:
I've bookmarked a few favorites that I know I will return to often.

My favorites are "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "it may not always be so".

dclary · Feb 11, 2009

scarletpeaches said:
I've read the explanation and I still don't appreciate it. *shrugs*

I'd rather read poetry that spoke for itself. User manuals belong with washing machines, not poems.

I like washing machines.

Dichroic · Feb 11, 2009

It was at least an interesting poem at the time, though I don't think anyone counts it as one of his greats. Now it's nothing new or unique - but that's only because so many other poets have followed the trails cummings blazed. So I'd agree with DClary: it would have been of equal importance from any poet of the time. But not from Johnny Nobody circa 2009. On the other hand, I'd class "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "i sing of Olaf glad and big" and my favorite, "who pays any attention to the syntax of things" as great poems if they were written by Johnny N tomorrow.

Ganymede · Feb 11, 2009

I would say it was the right form of experimentation, at the right time. All artists have works of varying quality. That's how one grows and develops. By practice and trying out new techniques.

Part of what makes Cummings's work interesting to me is his biography. During World War I he was an ambulance driver in France. While there, the outspoken anti-war Cummings and his friend were put in prison on charges of treason. They had written letters stating they refused to speak poorly of the Germans, and the censors intercepted them. The U. S. government sent Cummings' family a telegram saying that he had died -- and were it not for the relentless and exhaustive efforts of his father to discover what had happened to his son, Cummings might well have, given that the conditions were harsh, the food almost non-existent, and hygiene appalling. His novel The Enormous Room is a roman à clef about his ordeal, published in 1922. No doubt this influenced him and his view of the world considerably, leading him to experiment with all sorts of forms of expression against the establishment.

But his work goes beyond playing with punctuation and word placement. Many of his poems attack war, humanise prostitutes, portray sex, and question issues of class and other societal issues.

ee cummings - what am i missing?

Just happy to be here

volitare nequeo

Sleeps during the day

Just happy to be here

Just happy to be here

Just happy to be here

volitare nequeo

Just happy to be here

here for a minute...catch me?

Unabashed Mercenary

here for a minute...catch me?

Sleeps during the day

Just happy to be here

starting over

Unabashed Mercenary

that's di-CROW-ick

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