a spring poem by e.e. cummings
in just spring
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
e.e. ranged far and wee
Looking for poems
For any to see.
He liked the shape of them
The sound of them
And played with them.
Thanks for praising him!!
I wonder, but I would bet yes, if e.e. knew Chaucer’s version ?
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
(General Prologue, 1–12)
Cummings, despite the typography, arrangement, and spelling, often wrote in fairly traditional forms, which he disguised by bizarre layout. The 20th century was a bad experience–and ours if far far worse–but there are, here and there, even avant garde artists who accomplished something.
The poor old Yankee type, Edwin Arlington Robinson, was another avant garde individual in the bohemian crowd who accomplished something, in my opinion.
The House on the Hill
BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
“when the world is mud-
luscious the little”
He must have come from the South where the clay dirt is brick hard when dry and slick awful when wet.
Dear Dot,
Yes that old hard pan clay that is hard on people and makes for hard living and drove many a good men to hard liquor.
How wonderful to have Cummings arguably most famous poem greet me this morning! Spring is having a hard time establishing itself in St. Paul, though, really, when has it not? I like wowing visitors by telling them that the only month of all the years I recall in which it has not snowed here is July.
Dot–Sorry to prick your balloon, but Cummings was a Yankee through and through, born in Cambridge to Unitarian parents, a Harvard man, and as far as I know, he ventured south of Greenwich Village seldom if at all.
He was the second poet I was mad for, from age 12 (my age, that is) to 16 or so. Preceding him, Poe was my man, and, actually, they overlapped in my poetic affection. Still do, though they’ve been joined by hundreds of others.
Robert–Thanks for the Robinson. I came to him quite late, but he mounts in my estimation year by year.
Cummings’ faults are all very obviously–the typography, the absence of capitalization, the pursuit of novelty for its own sake–but he had solid merits as a poet. He ended up rather badly. When I once spent a day with the poet Conrad Aiken, he told me that Cummings, with his drinking and irregularities, had lost his agent and alienated publishers. Aiken liked and admired him, nonetheless, and tried to give him a hand in the “business.”
“In just spring” is one of his most popular poems, and I wonder if that is because it was included in the student anthology Sound and Sense.
Cummings was obviously a very talented poet. Yankee or not, perhaps it “took a few” to do it. It reminds me of a time many years ago, when the late Jesse Helms was Senator. My late husband became angry over a political issue and decided to write to him. He hesitated to mail it, crushed the paper and was about to throw it away. I encouraged him to mail it anyway. He did and it resulted in a prompt personal reply from Jesse. Sometimes it “takes a few” to get noticed.
Dear Dot,
I am mostly kidding about the term Yankee. At least more so than those running our country ever kid about the backward , no count, nothing good, silly, Southerners. I need to quit watching any news, attending any movies, reading anything published later than Brideshead Revisited, and stay away form grocery store check out lines and the best seller’s list at Barnes and Nobles, so I would not be so defensive about everything I hold dear that is vanishing like boiling water. I enjoy and always read your comments and would never intentionally offend you as you are too feisty and charming of a lady to aggravate on purpose.
Mr. Reavis,
There’s nothing backward about Southerners. By now I consider myself part of the Southern fabric and love the people. I sometimes feel at odds with the Fleming Foundation because it really is a male dominated site. However, I strongly believe in continuing education and the Fleming Foundation fits my needs in this area very well. I would love to go to Chicago for the Cicero Symposium in July. I’m thinking of asking my daughter if she’d be willing to come with me.
Thank you for your comment.
Mr. Olson – your comment reminds me of the time my wife and I lived in Newport, RI when I was on active duty. I thought Newport had only two seasons: Winter and July. We had occasion to visit Newport last May, which did not change my opinion.
As I am reading these poetry posts in reverse order, I commented on our “missing” Spring under the poem submitted by Mr. Reavis.
Dr Fleming, did you visit Conrad Aiken after he retired to Savannah? The house next door, the famous “Conrad Aiken House” – the one his family was living in when Aiken’s father killed his mother and committed suicide – was bought a few years after that terrible event by my great grandfather’s first cousin. He and his family lived in that house for decades, until about four or five years before Mr Aiken moved back to Savannah. As far as I know, they never met Mr Aiken.
Supposedly the house is haunted. A recent owner put up a you tube video in which he tries to film the ghosts.
AW, Yes I went to Savannah in, probably 1966, with a friend who became a museum curator. We stayed with the wife of Dr. Tono Waring, whose son I later got to know about 1980. The pretext was an interview for our college literary journal. I knew Aiken’s work reasonably well, and the conversation went reasonably well, though a prissy English professor pointed out to his disciples that I confessed to a good deal of ignorance of critical literature. Oddly enough, I still haven’t read The Disinherited Mind. It was a memorable afternoon, which included Aiken–Eliot’s literary executor–reciting TSE’s Bolo poems that had not been published, As I understand it, Aiken’s townhouse was next to the childhood home in which he found his dead parents. The ominous staircase to the second floor, as I was told, was on the other side of the wall of the fatal staircase.
Ah well, so long ago. I don’t know how I have been so lucky to have spent time with people I admire. I sometimes think think that it’s a bit like the Patchen novel, The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. Just try not to show off and you fall into things.