The Vision of E.E. Cummings

1. The Vision of E.E. Cummings Brandon Stolz, Isabella Brancifort, & Jessi Kruse

2. commonalities • Lower case • Imagery • Repetition • Love

3. 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

4. Early Inspiration • Farm • Mother • Longfellow • Lowell “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." 

5. Middle Life Inspirations • Ezra Pound • French detention camp • First wife "The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."

6. Late Life Inspirations • Death of Parents • Marion Morehouse • Travels • War “I think very much the influence for me in poetry is poetry”

7. Reoccurring ThemesNature, Love, Life Where's Madge then,
Madge and her men?
buriedwith
Alice in her hair,
(but if you ask the rain
he'll not tell where.)

beauty makes terms
with time and his worms,
whenloveliness
says sweetly Yes
to wind and cold;
and how much earth
is Madge worth?
Inquire of the flower that sways in the autumn
she will never guess.
butiknow

my heart fell dead before.) i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
myheart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,mydarling)
ifear
nofate(for you are my fate,mysweet)iwant
noworld(for beautiful you are my world,mytrue)
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;whichgrows
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)

8. The Positive Critics • Bewildering, complex • “the rule breaker, the grand violator' of every accepted standard of poetical and grammatical structure, which make his poems stand out…” • Creates a puzzle • “Cummings's ‘meaning’ habitually lies in his playful manipulation”

9. What We Think… “…the rule breaker” Agree • Different • Unprecedented “Creates a Puzzle” Agree • hidden meanings • Intentional layout • Disagree • Grammar confusing • Hard to understand

10. Negative Criticism • “Violates typographical norms only to be different…”(Kennedy, 8). • Discombobulated • “…annoying modernist gimmicks”(Friendman). • Confusing

11. What We Think… • Too Different: Agree • No benefit • Confusing • Unnecessary Vs. • “…modernist gimmicks”: Disagree • Distinguishes • Feeling/Mood

12. “Poetry Is What’s different