e. e. cummings
e. e. cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings, known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as an eminent voice of 20th century English literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth14 October 1894
CityCambridge, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Lessons hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he by, any chance, tell children that there are such monstrous things as peace and goodwill...a corrupter of youth no doubt...
Spring slattern of seasons you have soggy legs and a muddy petticoat drowsy is your hair your eyes are sticky with dream and you have a sloppy body from being brought to bed of crocuses when you sing in your whisky voice the grass rises on the head of the earth and all the trees are put on edge spring of the excellent jostle of thy hips and the superior
I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness
Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour 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 -excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems
Certainly the most obvious . . . example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.
there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singing but more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness
Meanwhile myself et cetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera.)
i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
The eyes of my eyes are opened.
somewhere i have never traveled, 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
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
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses
Who knows if the moon's a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky filled with pretty people?