I remember that in high school, when one of my beloved English teachers told us that he wrote his college thesis on e.e. cummings, I didn’t quite understand what he saw in the poet. My knowledge of cummings at the time was limited–I knew him as a man who loved lowercase and wrote “anyone lived in a pretty how town.” In the past few years, I have slowly come to appreciate and even love e.e. cummings for his playful imagination and his lyrical inventiveness. Edward Estlin Cummings–yes, that’s what the e’s stand for– is truly a poet who is fun to read.
“Humanity i love you”
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
(This next one is probably over-quoted at weddings or movies that have weddings in them, but I like it anyways)
“i carry your heart with me”
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
live in the layers 