e.e. cummings, spring

Top: spring singer


Left: pantheist's lectern


I’m pretty sure this is an unwritten rule: people who claim to be serious about literature are supposed to scoff at e.e. cummings as one more sentimentalist, along the lines of Longfellow or Dr. Seuss.

I’m pretty sure the following is true: many people who care about good writing have secretly liked e.e. cummings, the lovable rebel and the romantic in all senses of the word. Some might even confess they’ve found his work a turning point in their fondness for poetry.

I know this is true: several friends or colleagues and I have whispered to each other, “Yes, I like cummings. Shhhh. Don’t tell. It would kill any credibility I might have.” We might have gone on to say, “Yes, he’s sappy and puerile, but he opened up new ways to think, feel, and speak when I very much needed that.”

Here are two from cummings’ 100 selected poems (thanks to poemhunter.com). (I include the second poem, #54, mainly for its concluding aphorism—the rest is a bit much even for sappy me). (Did you ever notice that “manly” is natural typo for “mainly”? Can manly men care for cummings? “You with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?”)


#53

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile




#54

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance