Life's Not A Paragraph
Throughout his poetry, E. E. Cummings seduces readers deep into a thicket of scrambled words, missing punctuation, and unconventional structure. Within Cummings's poetic bramble, ambiguity leads the reader through what seems at first a confusing and winding maze. However, this confusion actually transforms into a path that leads the reader to the center of the thicket where Cummings's message lies: one should never allow one's experience to be limited by reason and rationality. In order to communicate his belief that emotional experience should triumph over reason, Cummings employs odd juxtapositions, outlandish metaphors, and inversions of traditional grammatical structures that reveal the "illogic" of reason. By breaking down the formal boundaries of his poetic structures, Cummings urges his readers to question boundaries of any kind. Indeed, in the same manner Cummings's literary style appears to be uncontrolled; many of his poems, such as "since feeling is first" and "as freedom is a breakfastfood," in turn suggest that emotion provides the compositional fabric for our experience of life, and therefore, emotion itself should never be defined or controlled.
In "since feeling is first," Cummings urges his reader to reject any attempts to control emotion by using English grammar as one example of the restrictive conventions present in society. By stating that "since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things," Cummings suggests that emotion should not be forced to fit into some preconceived framework or mold (1-3). He carries this message throughout the poem by juxtaposing images of the abstract and the concrete--images of emotion and images of English grammar. The abstract na...
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...g thicket because he believes the path of the straight and narrow limits the possibilities of experience. Through the unconventionality of his poetic structures, Cummings urges his readers to question order and tradition. He wants his readers to realize that reason and rationality are always secondary to emotion, that emotional experience is a free-flowing force that should not be constrained. Cummings's poetry suggests that in order to get at the true essence of something, one must look past the commonsensical definition, and not be limited by "the syntax of things."
Works Cited
Cummings, E. E. "as freedom is a breakfastfood." E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962. Ed. George J. Firmage. New York: Liveright, 1991. 511.
Cummings, E. E. "Since feeling is first." E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1914-1962. Ed. George J. Firmage, New York: Liveright, 1991. 291.
This poem by e. e. cummings describes the link between age and happiness by relating the two with simplicity. With this simplicity, however, there is a break from reality, and there are consequences. We can only do what is natural for us.
Poetry is something that is to be read delicately and cautiously if one wanted to find meaning through the words. Readers have to be gentle and patiently ponder about what they are reading in order to find any significance in the poem. If someone is not patient with reading, they will not feel impacted by poetry and will not want to read it. In Billy Collins’, “Introduction to Poetry,” he uses figurative language to help readers see that the way to enjoy and understand poetry is by reading between the lines and being patient with how each individual relates to the readings.
Good poetry provides meaningful commentary. One indication of a poem’s success in this is the depth of thought the reader has as a result of the poem. The poems I anthologized may take different
Constantakis, Sara. "Since Feeling Is First." Poetry for Students. Vol. 34. Detroit: Gale / Cengage Learning, 2008. 171-81. Print.
Throughout his poetry, Collins demonstrates, in a witty and satirical voice, his insightfulness towards the objects, using numerous poetic devices, especially allusions and metaphors to effectively convey his messages, most of which revolves around the theme of death. Humor and irony are unique combinations Collins displays in many of his poems, challenging the readers to interpret his work from different perspectives. In “Introduction to Poetry,” Collins offers a witty comparison between the definition of poetry and various other experiments. He asks the reader to “hold [the poem] up to the light/ like a color slide” (1-3), “press an ear against its hive” (4), “drop a mouse into a poem” (5), “walk inside the poem's room” (7), and “waterski across the surface of a poem” (9-10). Rather than stiffly explaining the definition of a poem, he finds creative and humorous approaches to explain his methods of enjoying the poems, and promote the readers’ interest towards discovering the true meaning of poetry.
E. Cummings creates a critical and intolerant tone. He uses his work to criticize “most people” and how they blindly follow others. Cummings intolerance arises from others critical opinion of not normal people, whom the townspeople of the writing do not acknowledge. The uniqueness of both the main characters in the writing and Cummings is shown by the distinctiveness, inconsistency, and incorrectness of the writing. This tone directly relates to the theme and how anyone and noone are compassionate, caring people who actually recognize the value of life ,but are surrounded by townspeople who just stumble through life without a care or emotion. Cummings uses the seasons, bells, his unique composition and the repetition of “Women and men” and “anyone” to create and emphasize the unfortunate cycle of life. The use of the seasons in lines three,eleven, and thirty-four emphasise the passing of time and the unchanging ways of the townspeople. “Women and men”, in lines five and thirty-three,are used to remind us of Cummings definition of “most people” and how people tend to blend in and follow. The bells in lines two and twenty-four are used to indicate a change in the character 's, the first bell is before love and the second bell is rang before death.These significant life transitions show how love and death are final. life The character “anyone” introduces a person, unlike any others in the town, between him and his
He illustrates the agony of thinking and the burden it places on him. Through his self-reflection, Douglass explains the pain and discomfort his expanding knowledge bears upon him, a young boy exploring his present world to discover that maybe ignorance really is bliss. Through the use of several literary devices such as specified diction, irony, and parallelism, the speaker relays a desperate tone throughout this section of his narrative elaborating on the torment
Fairley, I.R. (1975). E.E. Cummings and ungrammar: A study of syntactic deviance in his poems. New York: Watermill.
In Langston Hughes' poem, "Freedom," he emphasizes the struggle to enjoy the freedoms that he knows are rightfully his. He reflects the American desire for freedom now when he says, "I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread." He recognizes the need for freedom in its entirety without compromise or fear.
...number of visual effects in his poetry. He combined the lack of punctuation, capitalization, and creative spacing with his topics, such as the seasons, to convey his messages. Some readers find the visual effects in his poems disconcerting and feel that they are meaningless because of it. However, others find his visual effects helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of his poems and the messages he was trying to convey. Cummings' poems were definitely meant to be viewed rather than simply listened to so that the reader can benefit from the full effect of them. His poetry does not follow traditional rules and is very unpredictable. As a result, they leave more room for your imagination to soar.
“I look to poetry, with its built-in capacity for compressed and multivalent language, as a place where many senses can be made of the world. If this is true, and I’ve built a life around the notion that it is, poetry can get us closer to reality in all its fluidity and complexity.”
This makes Cummings writing reach a level of not only depth, but the reader is able to enter the heart and feeling of his
For some individuals, poetry is a form of freedom and expression. It is one of the many creative ways to release feelings of anger and happiness from the human mind. The intensity of every rhythm and word, and style of each poem allows readers to uncover deeper significance to the context. The rich variety achieved by mixing a combination of human imagination and reality to tell a story with deeper meaning is remarkable. This concept of combining poems and human imagination together was popularized by Edgar Allan Poe. Living an impoverished life, Poe penned stories of horror and mystery into collections of poems and short stories. He expressed his thoughts on paper with great thrill and excitement. Known for his wild imagination that included suspenseful, dark tales, he posed as a literary figure and inspired many across the world.
...vocal statement about the ?organic? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Mayflies? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell?s neat formulation. Here Wilbur has not just seen and shown ?the bright underside of? a ?dark thing.? In a poem where the speaker stands in darkness looking at what ?animate[s] a ragged patch of glow? (l.4), we are left finally in a kind of grayness. We look from darkness into light and entertain an enchanting faith that we belong over there, in the immortal dance, but we aren?t there now. We are in the machine-shop of poetry. Its own fiat will not let us out completely.
The New Critics, just like Wimsatt and Beardsley put forward in their essay, also believed in the ‘organicity’ of the text. In the essay, they write, “A poem should not mean but be.” And, since the meaning of the poem or the text is the medium through which it can exist, and words, in turn, is the medium through which the meaning is expressed, the poem or the text b...