Happy Birthday: E. E. Cummings

October 14, 2009

[CC photo (larger view)  by Tony the Misfit]

Today is the birthday of E. E. Cummings, born on this day in 1894. In a letter, Robert Lowell remarked about Cummings:

“He [Cummings] is a razor-blade without the handle.”

(Side note: the common belief that Cummings preferred his name to be printed in all lower-case is an enduring myth.)

A friend related a sad story on a mailing list this morning. A huge fan of Cummings as a college student, this friend worked on an Honors project intending to defend Cummings’ poetry. By the time he was done, he found himself agreeing with the critics about Cummings’ sentimentality and originality. He concluded:

“Haven’t been able to read Cummings much since, beyond the occasional anthology gem.  I long ago sold his Complete Poems.”

I remarked that this was a sad tale… and not for Cummings. Despite occasionally using the term myself, I’ve never managed to come up with a sufficient explanation of “sentimentality.” I know the dictionary definition and understand the general idea that it’s “unearned emotion” or “cheap shots” (as one of the list denizens remarked), but in practice it often seems to be a way of dismissing the work rather than acknowledge a failure on the part of the reader. I’ve not yet found a way to know if a poem or song or story is sentimental or if it’s just that the reader has lost the capacity he or she once had to appreciate it in the same way that, as we age (and learn), we lost the ability to appreciate so many things.

If developing a sophisticated poetry palate means dismissing Cummings, I’ll remain a troglodyte and continue to enjoy his “sentimental” writing. In honor of Cummings birthday, I’m including here few poems (excluding one I posted here before: “maggie and millie and molly and may”).

First, a poem I read as part of a custom wedding ceremony I wrote and performed for a friend:

“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

I love Cummings’ phrasing: “unbeautiful … furnished souls” and, of course, the final lines (Cummings had a great knack for closure, an effect intensified by the miniature chaos of his typography):

“the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls”

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things-
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps.   While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
….the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

And sometimes the typography and punctuation is just so perfectly suited that I’ll hear that “click of the lid of a well-made box” in the middle of one of Cummings’ poems:

“Buffalo Bill”

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Continuing with worldly matters, Cummings wasn’t afraid to get it on either:

“I like my body”

I like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh…And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new

And while some of Cummings’ political poems are probably the easiest to attack, my mind flashes to this poem often when I hear news about our current combat activities, maimed soldiers, dead civilians and no good end in sight:

“i sing of Olaf glad and big”

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion    
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified    
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

These are mostly well-anthologized poems, which isn’t surprising given Cummings’ consistent popularity (and there are many even more anthologized than these… I leave that to your Google-Fu). The best poems have naturally been recognized many times. But I’ll close with one I don’t see very often:

sonnet entitled how to run the world)

A always don’t there B being no such thing
for C can’t casts no shadow D drink and

E eat of her voice in whose silence the music of spring
lives F feel opens but shuts understand
G gladly forget little having less

with every least each most remembering
H highest fly only the flag that’s furled

(sestet entitled grass is flesh or swim
who can and bathe who must or any dream
means more than sleep as more than know means guess)

I item i immaculately owe
dying one life and will my rest to these

children building a rainman out of snow

Tags: birthday, ee cummings, poetry, poets