e.e. cummings, "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

anyone lived in a pretty how town - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

"anyone lived in a pretty how town" has always been one of my favorite cummings poems. It might see the best there is in human love, and it captures small town life about as well as any writing I know, even though it consists of fancy and allegory more than detailed realism.

In Republic, Ohio in the year 2010, there sits Anyone in the hot red car he borrowed from a buddy to impress Noone. He's meeting her for lunch downtown at Fathead's restaurant. Republic has seen better days, but it's still a pretty how town.

Of course, that's only the beginning. Harvey and Lolo are also Anyone and Noone at the other end of the story. Why not? And why not make Anyone a veteran?

Lolo was ten years younger than Harvey, though each ended up with 88 earth years. Not too bad.

I wonder what they talked about. Maybe they had supper in front of the TV after about 1960, though the picture was probably pretty snowy until the cable came in around 1980. Did they watch Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley? Most likely they got only one channel and didn't have to choose.

anyone lived in a pretty how town - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More


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Thomas Lux, "It's the Little Towns I Like"

It's the Little Towns I Like by Thomas Lux : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

In pursuit of more poems that raise the question of conversation compared to poetry, I came across Thomas Lux's "It's the Little Towns I Like." I was looking for a different Lux poem, but the small town theme in the title here caught my eye, and I like what he does with it.

With Lux, I usually do like it. Among contemporary poets, his work creates an unusual balance between accessibility and density. He tells good stories; his frequent anger seems justified, seems to be our anger, or the anger we should have if we weren't lazy and complacent; yet he makes us laugh; and he gives us imagery that's approachable and memorable.

On the side of density, he's almost always in the service of the universal themes, like social injustice, and most of his lines of, say, four words or more offer small gifts of their own as they move toward the larger gift of the whole poem. Surely it's a given that memorable imagery serves both accessibility and density. In short, Lux is no lightweight, but neither is he a tangle of techniques that are all brain, no heart. (Remember Yeats's great line in "Easter 1916": "Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart").

Still, in the end--or should I say, "At the end of the day?"--ugh, gag me with a spoon--who started that? More to the point, who were the first few to regurgitate it? They were probably too busy "going forward" and "begging the question" to notice they had jumped on the instant-oats-of-cliche wagon and steered it into the mainstream of TV anchor-speak)--

Speaking of streams, one of Lux's greatest lines is, "If a river could look over its shoulder . . . ."

--Where was I?

In the end, it was Lux's reference to fathers and the similarity to Bob Hicok's "O my pa-pa" (January 2 here at Banjo) that told me I had to post Lux's "It's the Little Towns . . . ." I predict there will be more of Thomas Lux at Banjo52.

It's the Little Towns I Like by Thomas Lux : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.