{"id":59249,"date":"2025-10-14T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=59249"},"modified":"2025-10-13T08:28:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:28:24","slug":"happy-birthday-e-e-cummings-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=59249","title":{"rendered":"“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination\u2026think twice before you think.” — E.E. Cummings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ee-cummings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s his birthday today. I responded to E.E. Cummings in a visceral way when I first had to read his stuff in high school. I didn’t know what it was all about, but I loved the syntax, the unmistakable look<\/i> of his poem on the page. (You could tell a poem was his without reading a word of it.) I liked puzzling the poems out. Thinking about them. I still do. <\/p>\n

Speaking of the “syntax of things”:<\/p>\n

since feeling is first<\/big><\/p>\n

since feeling is first
\nwho pays any attention
\nto the syntax of things
\nwill never wholly kiss you;<\/p>\n

wholly to be a fool
\nwhile Spring is in the world<\/p>\n

my blood approves,
\nand kisses are better fate
\nthan wisdom
\nlady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
\n\u2014the best gesture of my brain is less than
\nyour eyelids’ flutter which says<\/p>\n

we are for each other: then
\nlaugh, leaning back in my arms
\nfor life’s not a paragraph<\/p>\n

And death i think is no parenthesis<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nMore on Cummings after the jump: <\/p>\n

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One of the poems we read in high school was “next to of course god america i”. I didn’t quite understand it yet, but somehow I knew<\/i> it. I got the critique. It was a glimpse into a world of perspective beyond my years. Again, I liked thinking about it, wondering about it. <\/p>\n

next to of course god america i<\/big><\/p>\n

“next to of course god america i
\n love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
\n say can you see by the dawn’s early my
\n country ’tis of centuries come and go
\n and are no more what of it we should worry
\n in every language even deafanddumb
\n thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
\n by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
\n why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
\n iful than these heroic happy dead
\n who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
\n they did not stop to think they died instead
\n then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”<\/p>\n

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nPerhaps the most famous of his poems is “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond”, the one woven into the plot and themes of Woody Allen’s Hannah and her Sisters<\/i>. <\/p>\n

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