Phillips 1
Alana Phillips
Professor Jean
ENC 1102
4 December 2014
Lost in Society
Edward Estlin Cummings (E.E. Cummings) is a poet, a novelist, and an artist known for his individualistic style. Readers of all ages were drawn to his poems because of his unique form of unorthodox literary elements. Throughout his life, E.E. Cummings had many experiences which he projected into all of his writings including his famous poems. For example, after his father died, he wrote poems such as my father moved through dooms of love and others. Cummings’ poems revolved around the topics of nature, love, and war, which further escalated his popularity in the 20th century.
E.E. Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings) was born on October 14th 1894 in Cambridge,
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Cummings may not be the simplest of poets to understand, his poetry has made a large impact on our society of contemporary ideas and experimental art that we cannot
Phillips 2 denie. In his works, Cummings meaningful misapplication of punctuation and grammar sets his signature style of writing apart from other poets. E.E Cummings form and content is driven from his own personal ideas of love and individualism over society and what’s considered normal. The relationships between those contrasting themes are here exemplified in three of his poems, with the main one being the poem, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”. In E.E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town, he uses contrast, style, and tone to convey his theme to the reader. The first compelling poetic device Cummings uses is contrast to emphasize the meaning of the poem. He organizes the stanzas into groups of three so that each section describes a different group of characters. As Steinmann explains, the first stanza mentions the protagonists, the second refers to the townspeople, and the third discusses the children. This pattern continues from the subject anyone and noone, to the unhappy women and men, to the dismal children. Although, all that is left after anyone and noone die, is the boring lives of the
One example of analyzing the poem is how the lines stop in random places. This can also be called, enjambment. The poem is describing a fight. When fights happen, they are fast and quick and intense, the author tries to recreate the chaos and speed of the fight by using enjambment. The second example of analyzing the poem is that the stanzas are broken up into four lines. The only lines that are not broken up into four lines are the last ones, which are broken up into couplets. The third example of analyzing this poem, is that there are a lot of metaphors that bring out the intense and vehement emotion, such as, “A wall of fire sethes…”. This brings out all the emotions in the air, and what the angry parents feel like, even though the author doesn’t say that they were mad, you can guess how much anger and tension is in the
Throughout history there have been many poets and some have succeeded while others didn’t have the same luck. But in history e.e. Cummings has stunned people with his creativity and exposure to the real world and not living in the fantasy people imagine they live in. Cummings was a great poet, and was able to make his own way of writing while he was also involved greatly in the modernist movement. But he demonstrates all his uniqueness in all and every poem, delivering people with knowledge and making them see the world with different eyes as in the poem “Since feeling is first”. Biography Born on October 14, 1894, E. E. Cummings an American poet was born at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings talks about the cycle of life and the importance of structure, symbolism, and language of the poem. For instance, the poem has nine stanzas, which has a rhyming pattern of AABC. The rhythm of the poem is significant for it supports one of themes, the cycle of life. Cumming uses season to explain the poem's progress. “spring summer autumn winter” (3) and “sun moon stars rain” (8) symbolizes time passing, which represents life passing. In the poem, as the seasons and skies rotate, life continues along with them. In addition, the uses of the words “snow” (22), “buried” (27), “was by was” (28), and “day by day” (29) leading to death. Towards the end of the poem, the depression of death was mention, but Cumming was just stating the n...
Rotella, Guy. "Nature, Time, and Transcendence in Cummings' Later Poems." Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings. Ed. Guy Rotella. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1984.
Said to be the father of jazz, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, born on April 29, 1899, was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra. Duke Ellington was known and is remembered for his unique and profound style of jazz music. His development in jazz was one of the most spectacular in the history of music, as demonstrated by more than fifty years of sustained achievement as an artist which led him to be known as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Duke’s music was so original, he called it “American Music” rather than jazz. Based on his success, it’s unlikely to think that he was not even attracted to music in his younger years, however music clearly became a very important part of his life, as he still reigns
Friedman, N. (1960). E.E. Cummings: The art of his poetry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
This source is reliable because it provides all the information needed to write a biography on E.E. Cummings. It has an author’s biography, poem text, poem summary, themes, style, historical content, and a critical overview. It gives a brief summary of each line of the poem, so I have a clear understanding of what the poem means. This poem displays Edwards’s poetic innovations that distinguish his verses. Two of Cummings most significant contributions to modern poetry were word play and unusual spatial arrangement.
Edgar Allan Poe, born January 19, 1809, was an American poet, widely known for his literature and his belonging toward Romanticism. Born in Boston, he was soon orphaned after the abandonment of his father and death of mother between 1810-1811. In 1827, Poe released his first book, “Tamerlane and Other Poems”. This was not the only one, however, for he released several other books before the death of his older brother in 1831. After his brother’s death, Poe made the decision to become a writer.
Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894. He earned a BA from Harvard and volunteered to go to France during World War I with the Ambulance Corps. After the war, he stayed in Paris, writing and painting, and later returned to the US. He died in Conway, New Hampshire, in 1962. Cummings is one of the most innovative contemporary poets, he used unconventional punctuation and capitalization, and unusual line, word, and even letter placements - namely, ideograms. Cummings' most difficult form of poetry is probably the ideogram; it is extremely terse and it combines both visual and auditory elements. There may be sounds or characters on the page that cannot be verbalized or cannot convey the same message if pronounced and not read. Four of Cummings' poems "la," "mortals," "!blac," and "swi" illustrate the ideogram form quite well. Cummings utilizes unique syntax in these poems in order to convey messages visually as well as verbally.
First, E.E. Cummings used visual techniques to create his poetry and make it unique. For example, in Document A if you spell out the words and letters it says “a leaf falls”. If you look at the way it was placed it looks like a leaf or object falling. Another word in the poem is ‘loneliness”, which can signify that the leaf is lonely or that E.E. Cummings is lonely. In this poem the visual
Edward Estlin Cummings, commonly referred to as E. E. Cummings, was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a source of vast knowledge and was responsible for many creative works other than his poetry, such as novels, plays, and paintings. He published his first book of poetry Tulips and Chimneys in 1923. Many of his poems are known for the visual effects they create through his unusual placement of words on the page, as well as, his lack of punctuation and capitalization. The manner in which Cummings arranges the words of his poems creates an image in the reader's mind of the topic he is discussing, such as a season or climbing stairs. His visual style also brings emotions, such as loneliness or cheerfulness, to the reader's mind. Due to this creativity, Cummings won many awards, such as the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize in poetry (Marks 17).
The first technique Cullen uses to show his theme is the structure of the poem. “Any Human to Another” is made up of five stanzas: the first and second are six lines long, the third and fifth contain seven lines, and the fourth stanza is made up of only five lines. The author uses these varying lengths for a purpose; he wants the readers to see the way in which a variety of different types join together to form one poem. This is analogous to the way in which many unique people make up our society. The diversity of stanza length in the poem shows that the diversity of society in the world is a main contributing factor to our culturally enriched lives. Another example of how the structure of this poem relates to the theme is in the rhyme schemes of the five stanzas. Each part has several lines that rhyme with other lines in that stanza; however, the rhyme scheme of one stanza does not match with that of any other. This again shows the unique parts of each stanza that all go together to make one beautiful poem. Similar to the way this poem would lack excitement if it followed one rhyme pattern the whole way through, life would be not b...
Cummings work is his pattern use of metaphors. Metaphors, much like capitalization make up a great deal of the poetry E.E. Cummings writes. In the poem “I Have Found What You Are Like”, this use of metaphors can be seen through the entirety of the poem. A great example of this is the metaphor; “...your smile is/stirringofbirds…”. The effect of this is for the reader (who has no knowledge of “you” prior to reading the poem) to understand what he sees and what he feels when he see’s “You’s” smile, even though they might not know them.
The first theme I find important is: do not judge others and their intentions. This theme is shown in the book because of rumors about the Radley’s and how Scout’s family is also being treated the same way now. The first stanza depicts this theme by showing how your feelings are affected by the disasters that come with life. The second theme in the book is: always have courage, especially when you stand alone. Many parts of the poem correllate to the characters and their situations, and all the characters have to show an immense deal of courage at some point in their lives. It takes Atticus courage to raise Jem and Scout on his own, for Scout to hold back her anger and take humiliation, for Boo Radley to endure all the hatred for him, and for Mrs. Duboise to accept death willingly. All of them face it alone as well and deal with their feelings on their own. Therefore, it almost seems like this poem was made for the story itself and to symbolically show the troubles of all the
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...