Category: E. E. Cummings

Is That A Fact

10/14/2024

Today’s #DickinsonDaily post has nothing to do with Emily Dickinson (although I do mention her once a little bit later on). Instead, today’s post is in celebration of E. E Cummings’ 130th birthday!

To celebrate Cummings I started with Google and typed in “what are some little known facts about E. E. Cummings.”

Six categories and facts popped up, but my first here today was not among them. I’m going to start with an obvious trivia question about the poet – and that is, what does E. E. stand for? Do you know?

E. E. stands for Edward Estlin.

Now here are the six categories/facts that popped up in Google (my comments are in parentheses).

1. Early life

Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894. His father was a minister and professor at Harvard, where Cummings attended and earned his BA and MA.

2. Visual art

Cummings was a visual artist who continued to paint and draw throughout his life. (NOTE: A painting by Cummings hangs in the Whitney Museum of American Art – see below.)

3. Persona

The persona "ee cummings" was created by both Cummings and his readers. Cummings treated the persona with ambivalence and amusement, and there's no evidence that he intended to be known by that name. (That’s right – most scholars of the poet present his name as E. E. Cummings vs. “ee cummings”).

4. The "i"

Cummings's use of a lowercase "i" in his poetry was an expression of humility and childhood. He felt that the English language's capitalization of only the first-person pronoun was egotistical. (I was surprised that this one popped up as it is not a “little known fact.”)

5. Ambivalence

Cummings was ambivalent about his father and Harvard, casting off their earnestness, moralism, and Puritanism while still attending his father's university. (Of course, who did this sound like to me – but Emily Dickinson.)

6. Advice to audiences

Before one of his plays, Cummings advised audiences to relax and let the work "strut its stuff". He wanted audiences to experience the work, rather than analyze or understand it.

For more information on Cummings, try the sites linked below.

New England Historical Society: Seven Fun Facts About E. E. Cummings

Kids Encyclopedia Facts:
E. E. Cummings Facts
for Kids

The Poetry Foundation: Information on Poet
E. E. Cummings

Tanvir's Blog:
E. E. Cummings
Quick Facts

The E. E. Cummings
Society Blog:

Plog (Poetry Blog)
Posts from the
ELD Museum Site:

They Say It's Your Birthday...

10/3/2024

I’m coming up on two years of #DickinsonDaily posts (on CounterSocial), and I’ve kept a log on all the topics I’ve covered, so I looked back on 10/3/23 to see if I posted any Dickinson “birthday” poems – not in celebration of her birthday (hers is in December) but in observance of mine! LOL!

Turns out, no – I didn’t post anything about my birthday. Instead, last October I began a multi-day look at the torrid love affair between Dickinson’s brother Austin and the much-younger Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of an Amerherst College professor.

This year l decided to focus on a more cheerful topic, but to be honest, the two poems by Dickinson which include the word “birthday” are not really cheerful at all.

The first, “One year ago – jots what?” looks back on the anniversary of a past romance – and take a look at the start of that fifth stanza:

If to be “Elder”— mean most pain--
I’m old enough, today

LOL – well that seems appropriate for me today!

The other poem, “Birthday of but a single pang,” was sent to her sister-in-large Susan on her fiftieth birthday:

Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come -
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom -

Well, now, isn’t that a pleasant thought – LOL – but, alas, a true one (the letter/poem in Dickinson’s own handwriting can be seen HERE).

Okay, so not every birthday thought from Dickinson is gloom and doom. She wrote this line in a letter to her cousin, Louise Norcross:

“We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”

(LOL – I find it hard to believe how new I am today.)

The letter includes this short poem, and the complete letter can be found HERE.

A word left careless on a page
May consecrate an eye,
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled author lie.

Another of my favorite poets is E. E. Cummings. He too has a birthday coming up – on October 14th. Here’s a much more cheerful take on birthdays from Cummings:

your birthday comes to tell me this

–each luckiest of lucky days
i've loved,shall love,do love you,was

and will be and my birthday is

I’ll have more about Cummings later in the month!

For now, I'm going to turn my attention to this cinnamon roll that is as big as my head.

Miscellaneous Deductions

9/17/2024

I have a lot of miscellaneous info to share this week, so that made me wonder if Dickinson ever used the word “miscellaneous” in any of her poems.

What do you think?

Well…

I thought the answer would be zero – but in fact, she did use the word in one poem, “From Cocoon forth a Butterfly” (and by the way, “butterfly” appears in 44 different poems).

There is so much to love and discuss about this poem…

* Structurally
* Thematically
* Poetically

Here are just a few points of interest in each of those areas:

STRUCTUALLY:

* The inverted syntax at the start of the poem;

* The innovative handling of parts of speech (for example, the use of “forth” in line 1 – a verb?);

* The third stanza – with five lines;

* The concise, if not compact, use of language.

THEMATCIALLY:

* A day-in-life of a butterfly – a “Miscellaneous Enterprise” to a human observer, although “The Clovers – understood.”

And since I opened this post with a focus on “miscellaneous,” here’s a miscellaneous question about Cummings’ poems: Since Cummings is known for his use of lower-case letters, why the capital letters in these two poems? (See “For” in line 11 of “maggie and milly and molly and may,” and “From,” “Between,” “My,” “Into,” and “With” in “when god lets my body be.”) The capitalization of those words was clearly deliberate – so why?

Hmm…as another aside, Cummings’ allusions to the sea made me think of Whitman’s poem “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” (i.e., the sea):

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" by Walt Whitman is a deeply personal poem that explores the themes of loss, love, and the birth of a poetic voice, primarily through the lens of a young boy witnessing a mourning seabird on the seashore, where the bird's mournful song becomes a catalyst for the boy's own artistic awakening and understanding of death and grief; essentially, the poem is a meditation on how profound personal experiences can shape one's creative identity.”

That poem is HERE.

Back to Dickinson’s poem – does anything in particular in that poem speak to you? I will say that it made me think of something about the life of one particular butterfly that I find astounding – so I’ll share that bit of miscellaneous information tomorrow.

CONTINUED...HERE

Mental Meanderings

6/27/2024

The other day I posted E. E. Cummings’ poem “old age sticks" (HERE), a poem about generational conflict, and I’ve been talking about how creative souls push the boundaries in various fields of fine arts, like poetry and art – people like E. E. Cummings (and just BTW, one thing I LOVE about “old age sticks” is how the two final words, “growing old,” are split so that they also say “owing old” – as one generation owes the previous one for being “agents of change”).

This morning I ran a Google-search on “who pushed the boundaries in the field of poetry.” I just wanted to see what names might pop up – but I got a whole mix of responses, none of which (at least at first glance) had much to do with what I was looking for.

One article called, “Re-cognition and Re-vision: Pushing the Boundaries of Poems” turned out to be a solicitation for an online poetry writing class. However, it began with this statement:

“Writers often place a hard line between the acts of writing and revising. While the first is seen as an act of joyful inspiration, the second is generally viewed as drudging perspiration.”

I mention this because as I sit here this morning typing on all of these topics (poetry, art, boundary pushing – “growing old,” “owing old” – agents of change, etc.) my brain is shooting off in many directions, so what you are reading is entirely the result of mental meanderings vs. any “drudging perspiration.”

Yesterday I gave a homework assignment (HERE): Listen to John Cage’s piano piece, 4’ 33”. Plus at some point these past few days, I mentioned R. Mutt’s (aka Marcel Duchamp’s) sculpture “Fountain.”

I cited those two works to make the point that some who push boundaries do so to make a point. Others (like Dickinson) push boundaries because it’s within them – it’s who they are.

Look at this info about Georgia O’Keefe:

“Georgia knew from the age of 12 that she wanted to be an artist. She went to art school but what she was taught there didn’t seem relevant to the way she wanted to paint. Then in 1912 she discovered the revolutionary ideas of an artist and designer called Arthur Wesley Dow.

As O’Keeffe explained: ‘His idea was, to put it simply, fill a space in a beautiful way’. This was a light-bulb moment for her and from then on she began to experiment with shapes, colours and marks.”

And this story of O’Keeffe and Dow (with which name are you familiar?) reminded me of Vachel Lindsay and Langston Hughes (with which name are you familiar?). I’ll get into that tomorrow.

I'll Be Art In A Minute

6/25/2024

What makes a poem a poem? What defines art?

I’ve been posting info related to those questions, and it all began a few days ago when I shared William Carlos Williams’ poem about the red wheelbarrow – but is that really a poem?

PART 1 is HERE. PART 2 is HERE.

I suppose it’s easy to dismiss the lines as nothing more than a stagy and meretricious statement; however, if you completed your homework and read Sharon Creech’s book “Love That Dog,” you might sit back and think, “Hmm – maybe there’s more to that sentence (i.e., WCW’s) than just sixteen precisely placed words.”

Same with E. E. Cummings’ “l(a.” When I post that poem on the board in classrooms, students are quick to dismiss it – except that I employ an abundant use of wait-time until someone (or some ones) begin to decipher the lines – “A leaf falls; loneliness” – and we discuss why Cummings split the words up like that. Suddenly, their opionions take a complete one-eighty.

Another Cummings’ work I love is “old age sticks,” a poem about generational conflict – and I LOVE the fact that the final two words, “growing old,” is split so that the actual final words are “owing old” – as one generation owes the previous one for how they pushed the boundaries.

Okay, so that brings me back to those artworks from the Guggenheim Museum I posted yesterday – and yesterday I posted them without any information. This morning, I’ll post the statements that were included on the museum’s walls – and see if (like Creech’s book for WCW’s poem) the inside dope does anything to change your initial reactions to the pieces.

They may or may not – but at least one can begin to appreciate how the artists in these examples ventured to push boundaries – and, of course, we can then consider whether or not they pushed the boundaries forward – or sideways? Did they push them thoughtfully? Haphazardly?

CLICK THE IMAGES BELOW TO ENLARGE.

You know, Dickinson was quite a boundary-pusher herself with her errant punctuation, discommodious syntax, and deviant capitalization and rhyme – so much so that early publishers tried to revise and repair her works to make them more palatable for the public.

BTW: I found a little more info on those jeans -- see the info pictured at the right.

Also, I found info on the artist -- quite a "boundary pusher" himself; click HERE.

AND -- a few years ago, one pair of those jeans sold for $25,000.00. Click HERE.

French Twist

2/19/2024

LOL – it seems that I need to rethink something!

A few days ago, I started a discussion about the idea of “deliberateness” on the part of creative artists (HERE). I posted a poem by E. E. Cummings, “l(a,” and questioned whether or not every aspect of the poem was deliberate.

In particular, I asked if the first two lines of the poem – which spell “la” and “le,” two singular articles in French – could have been deliberate on the part of Cummings.

Imma be honest, I’ve never thought so. I just thought that was coincidental.

The next day I posted a second E. E. Cummings' poem, “old age sticks.” I did this because Cummings split the poem’s final words “growing old” in such a way that the poem ends with the youthful generation “OWING old” – and then my discussion turned to Dickinson’s “work as an innovator in the field of rhyme” which “permanently altered the ears of poets and readers.”

And then @nblumengarten responded on CoSo with this: “Going from the previous poem (i.e., “l(a”), "tres" and "pas” (from “old age sticks): Tres meaning, "very" and pas, meaning "the right of precedence."

To which I gasped and had an “aha moment.”

I responded, “Cummings did live in Paris for a short time! I always tended to think the le/la in “l(a” was coincidental. I think I need to rethink that!”

I’d also seen the “tres” and “pas” beaucoup times and (a) I’ve always wondered why not “tress” and “PASS” and (b) I never once thought, “there must be a secondary meaning with French words.”

Obviously by using “tres” and “pas,” Cummings was deliberate. The words are meant to suggest “trespass” AND to provide additional meaning in French.

Sooo…now I’m a believer: “la” and “le” were equally deliberate!

There are no coincidences.

NOTE: I posted all of this on CounterSocial -- the social media platform I joined after I deleted my Twitter account (due to the takeover by Melon Husk & the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation) -- and following all of this, there was some debate as to what "pas" meant in French.

One person said, "I've never seen "pas" translated as "the right of precedence." However, another showed a dictionary entry for the word with "1: the right of precedence; 2: a dance step or combination of steps." Even so, the debate continued.

At one point, I added, "Well, I don’t speak French, so I don’t know the nuances of the language, but even if "pas" just stands for “not,” it fits the poem. Plus I always wondered why Cummings put “tres” and “pas” vs. “pass” — and French makes so much sense!"

Finally, I added, "I listen to classical music, & in the car tonight on the way home, I heard just the end of what the announcer said was a 'Pas de Deux' from some work by Igor Stravinsky -- and it hit me: the idea of "pas" as "dance" in the Cummings' poem "old age sticks" -- as EVERY generation of parents & older folks rebuff the new generation's dance moves. I love it! LOL -- I NEVER thought of the 'French connection' for this poem -- but it makes so much sense!"

Oo la la, say "la vie," and excuse my French -- as they say! ; )

Deliberate Intent -- Part 1

2/16/2024

I’ve been busy, busy, busy – so I’ve been making slow progress in reading Judy Jo Small’s book “Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme.”

Sooo…over time I’ll post info from the book and discuss various points, and today I’ll start with a compelling point made early in the book – in its introduction – and then turn to a poem by E. E. Cummings. Then tomorrow, I’ll have some discussion on another poem by Cummings – and soon thereafter I’ll return to Dickinson (and maybe even some lyrics by Dua Lipa?).

In “Positive as Sound,” Small wrote “...we may conclude that Dickinson had a strong, relatively unwavering sense of how she wanted her poems to sound and that she pursued that end deliberately.” Two pages later, she said, “that Dickinson’s rhymes are not the result of casual neglect.”

And it is that sense of “deliberateness” of poets – and painters, song-writers, sculptors, choreographers, photographers, etc. – and the fact that their work is not at all “the result of casual neglect” – that I’d like to examine this morning.

In poetry, every word, every syllable, every rhyme and every rhythm is pondered, planned, and purposeful – in short, everything is deliberate.

I definitely believe that is true – certainly close to 99% of the time. LOL.

Let’s take a look at E. E. Cummings’ “l(a" (shown at the right). In this poem, Cummings symbolizes loneliness as falling leaf – AND – he emphasized the concept of loneliness very deliberately in the way he dismantled, sliced, and rearranged the words.

In the first line, he used a lowercase “L,” which looks like the number one, and it’s separated parenthetically (to emphasize isolation) from the letter “a,” a single article in English. In line 7, the word “one” appears, and in line 8, there is another lowercase “L” that looks like a number one.

The structure of the poem – which represents a leaf falling to the ground – also depicts the structure of a number one – AND – the result at the bottom, “iness” (which I pronounce as “eye-ness,” i.e., the state of being “I”) – is the state of being one’s self.

All of this arrangement was purposeful and deliberate. Everything about the poem symbolizes and emphasizes loneliness.

I have even heard it suggested that in the first two lines of the poem, Cummings used the French singular articles “la” and “le” to underscore the idea of loneliness even further.

What do you think? Cummings was VERY deliberate in his arrangement. He was extremely deliberate. There was no “casual neglect.”

So did Cummings purposely hew this poem to include the French singular articles? Was he, in fact, that deliberate?

Deliberate Intent -- Part 2

Yesterday I began a discussion about “deliberateness” – the purposeful intent of an artist when creating a work – and in particular, a poet creating a poem.

This idea grew from statements in Judy Jo Small’s book “Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme”: “...we may conclude that Dickinson had a strong, relatively unwavering sense of how she wanted her poems to sound and that she pursued that end deliberately”; and two pages later, she said, “that Dickinson’s rhymes are not the result of casual neglect.”

Before getting to a work by Dickinson, I posted a short – but very deliberately written – poem by E.. E. Cummings – and I did ask if a couple of details in the poem were, indeed, deliberate – or coincidental? (Refer to Part 1 of this post above.)

Before getting to a discussion of Dickinson’s (and others’) deliberateness, I’d like to offer one other poem by Cummings, “old age sticks.”

This poem is obviously about generational differences/gap, and Cummings included some very creative details in emphasizing his point. For one, note that the language and images of the older generation are confined within parentheses – and the images of youth are outside those boundaries. Even the first line has a bit of a double meaning: not only does the older generation stick up signs of keep off, mustn’t and don’t – but older folks also often walk with “old age sticks” (i.e., canes).

Of course, at the end of the poem, stark reality hits: the youth go right on growing old.

When I teach this poem, I tell students that I believe there are two VERY important words related to the overall message of this poem.

Hmm...what two words could they be?

I’ll divulge them tomorrow when I continue discussing the idea of "deliberateness" with writers, artists, musicians, etc.
In the meantime – any guesses as to the two words I’m talking about?

Deliberate Intent -- Part 3

A couple of days ago, I started a discussion about the idea of “deliberateness” on the part of creative artists. I posted a poem by E. E. Cummings, “l(a,” and questioned whether or not every aspect of the poem was deliberate.

Yesterday, I posted a second E. E. Cummings' poem, “old age sticks,” and I mentioned that there were two words in the poem in particular that I felt were extremely important – and those two words actually come from the dissection of the poem’s final words “growing old”: Youth “goes right on growing old”; however, in the way Cummings split the words, youth also goes on “OWING old.”

Although the poem seems to focus on gaps and differences between generations, the ending subtly but masterfully recognizes that the newer, younger generation actually “owes” the previous generation for yanking down barriers, breaking glass ceilings, and stretching the boundaries they faced.

Of course, all of this discussion started when I quoted Judy Jo Small from her book “Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme”: “...we may conclude that Dickinson had a strong, relatively unwavering sense of how she wanted her poems to sound and that she pursued that end deliberately.”

Later in her introduction, Small said this: “Her work as an innovator in the field of rhyme, furthermore, has permanently altered the ears of poets and readers.”

She then quotes two lines from a poem by Frost (shown at the right):

Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Over time, Dickinson’s work increasingly became viewed by scholars and the public as “innovative rather than flawed.” As a result, all of the generations of poets after Dickinson “owe” her (to use Cummings’ verb) for stretching the boundaries of what was thought to be formal poetry.

More on this tomorrow.

Sea for Yourself

10/9/2020

I wrote a song based on E. E. Cummings' poem "maggie and milly and molly and may." It's a short, sweet poem about four girls' trip to the beach. The poem is almost like a nursery rhyme, but -- like many of Cummings' poems -- it is packed full of meaning. Here's a great analysis of the poem I found -- click HERE.

Cummings' poem is below on the left, and my lyrics are then show on the right. I have to admit -- I did make a change to the fourth line of the poem so that it would fit with the rhythm of the song. I changed "she couldn't remember her troubles" to "she forgot about her troubles." Other than that, I think the lyrics are pretty true to the poem.

By E. E. Cummings:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Here are the lyrics:

Maggie and Milly and Molly and May
Went down to the beach (to play one day)
Maggie discovered a shell that sang
So sweetly she forgot about her troubles.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea

Maggie and Milly and Molly and May
Went down to the beach (to play one day)
Milly befriended a stranded star
Whose rays five languid fingers were.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea

Molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles.

[Music]

Maggie and Milly and Molly and May
Went down to the beach (to play one day)
May came home with a smooth round stone
As small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea

The music is below. Click the images to enlarge.

Note: I didn't have space to write in the lyrics for the third time through ("May came home..."); however, the complete lyrics are shown above on the right.

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:leA!p: to Conclusions

9/29/2020

My wife and I took a walk around a small park this afternoon, and we took pictures of flowers, bees and bugs -- and there nestled atop a group of yellow flowers was a grasshopper. Well, of course I instantly thought of E. E. Cummings' poem about grasshoppers. Is there another and/or more clever poem about this insect?

By E. E. Cummings:

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo) k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;

Hmmm...just in case the formatting changes from my device to yours, here's what the poem should look like:

What does it all mean?

Obviously, it's a free verse poem where the word "grasshopper" appears four times in the poem -- although the letters are jumbled in different order as it leaps about the page.

With the rest of the poem, Cummings' pays homage to the very essence of the grasshopper -- "who as we look up now gathering into at he leaps arriving to rearrangingly become" itself.

Indeed, the grasshopper is incredible at being just that -- a grasshopper. He leaps about effortlessly and arranges and rearranges himself as necessary while always being true to himself, for he is at all times and utmost, a grasshopper.

On one blog I came across with a discussion on the poem (HERE), the writer said this, "Cummings was another American poet who came to Europe and was involved in the First World War, and lived in Paris in the 1920s. He was also a painter and met Pablo Picasso, and was influenced in his poetry (like so many others) by Ezra Pound. He is a strange mix of the avant-garde and the traditionalist - some of his poetry is quite traditional, and his use of nature in his poems especially is in some ways close to that of the Romantics."

That caught my eye, because when I wrote a take-off on Cummings' grasshopper poem, this is what I wrote:

o-a-i-c-p-s-s l-o-b-p-a
who
a)s h(e pain) ted
re(now)arrang
PPIABLOCOASS
ing (o
bJects) :f
oR
!m:
S a
(t
tAinInG .pOaSSbAlCoIP)
to
rei(be)nven(com)ti(e)ngly
a ,Picasso;

Here's what the Picasso poem says: "Pablo Picasso -- who as he painted now rearranging objects: forms attaining to reinventingly become a Picasso."

Below: A few additional shots from our walk:

Tree of Life

9/17/2020

If you are a regular to my plog (poetry blog), then you know that I've been writing out and posting my original songs based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I have completed two of them so far:

* The Sun Just Touched the Monring -- HERE
* Adrift! A little boat adrift! -- HERE

Today I started working on a song based on a poem by E. E. Cummings, "when god lets my body be." The portion of the song I have ready is posted below, and I will update the post when I have more ready.

Here is the poem by Cummings:

when god lets my body be

from each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little breasts
my strong fingers beneath the snow

into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be

with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

Here is how I changed the poem to create the lyrics:

When god lets my body be
When god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout,
shall sprout a tree
When god lets my body be

When god lets my body be
A rose shall beget the spring
That maidens whom passion wastes
Will lay between their breasts
When god lets my body be
Lets my body be
When god lets my body be

My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
My love walking in the grass
Their wings will touch with her face
Touch with her face

When god lets my body be
When god lets my body be
My heart shall be
Forever with the sea
When god lets my body be
Lets my body be
When god lets my body be.

Here is what I have ready so far (click the pages to enlarge):

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