An article on his spring poems
An article on cummings' diction
These articles are NOT going to be on your final. However, you may find that they help you to better understand the poems that WILL be on the final.
If commenting in response to this post, you might choose a favorite quotation from an article and comment on it. How did it add to your understanding? Why do or don't you agree with it? etc...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
"In these poems nature is perceived both in its physical essence as well as its mystical, transformative power. Norman Friedman's pioneering work in this area has provided us with an insight into the complicated nature of Cummings' transcendentalism. Closely associated with the New England tradition, Cummings' poetry also reflects, as Friedman shows, the Oriental mystical processes of transcending the negative by accepting it."
ReplyDeleteFrom article on Spring Poems.
I really connected with this passage in particular because it reflected my own idea that nature has both physical and "magical" abilities to change. These are "mysteries" as said in the quote, that humans should not try to understand, but rather simply "accept", which is an attitude clearly echoed in the poem "O Sweet Spontaneous". Also, I noticed that this ideology connects strongly to The Scarlet Letter, especially in Hawthorne and Cummings' uses of nature as the most vivid descriptors. Furthermore, they both share a theme of respecting nature and accepting it for what it is, in all its power and with all its mystery.
"Reacting against an increasingly technological Western society, marked by its organizational systems, social codes, and rhetoric of war-heroism, Cummings turned to nature as did the Romantics in the nineteenth century" this shows why so many of his poems include nature and the idea that humanity is destroying nature.I agree with this quote because it shows that EE Cummings poems were a backlash to the changes that were happening. He wanted to return to the days of working with nature
ReplyDelete"Cummings' choice of words is usually very precise. He is often more accurate than less experimental poets when it comes to conveying exactly what he intends to convey. He is a man who would let nothing stop him, neither conventional verse forms nor conventional word-usages, in his endeavor to say exactly what he wanted to say."
ReplyDeleteI liked this passage both because it made me laugh (with the part about not letting conventional word-usages stop him) and because it put into words what i thought differentiated Cummings from the other poets whose poems I've read. The passage made me think about some of the more descriptive lines I've read in his poems so far. I recalled two favorite Cummings-lines,
"throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame"
from "o by the by".
I'll now have to watch more carefully for his precise word choice so I can find some more beautiful lines.