This is The Poetry Foundation’s Essential American Poets Podcast. Essential American Poets is an online, audio poetry collection. The poets in the collection were selected in 2006 by Donald Hall when he was Poet Laureate. Recordings of the poets he’s elected are available online at poetryfoundation.org and at poetryarchive.org. In this edition of the podcast, we’ll hear poems by E.E. Cummings.
Edward Eslin Cummings was born in 1894 in Cambridge Massachusetts. The sounds and style of his adult writing can be detected even in notes he wrote his parents when he was a child. He decided to become a poet at a young age, an idea that his mother encouraged by reading to him and suggesting that he write a poem every day, which he did into his teenage years. By the time Cummings was at Harvard in 1916, modern poetry had caught his interest. He began to write experimental poems that ignored conventional punctuation and syntax. In April of 1917, with the first World War raging in Europe and the Untied States not yet involved, Cummings volunteered as an ambulance driver in France. While in Europe, he and his friend were imprisoned in a French detention camp on suspicion of treason. As a pacifist, Cummings had been vocal about his anti-War views and lack of hatred for the Germans. His first book, The Enormous Room, was a fictionalized account of his French captivity. Oddly cheerful in tone and free wheeling in style, it was well received. Cummings lived in New York and Connecticut, but went to Paris often to study and write. He spent time painting, and cubist concepts influenced his poetry. Like the cubist painters, Cummings wanted to depict different angles and perspectives in his poems. He did this by creating an interplay between spare language, the shapes of letters, and the white space of the page. The result often gives readers a new way of viewing a word or the world of language itself. Despite their non-traditional forms, Cummings’ poems came to be popular with readers. Some poems unabashedly focused on traditional and romanticized themes, like love, childhood, or flowers. But there are also darker and satirical aspects to Cummings’ work, poems that attack conventional thinking and society’s restrictions on free expression. Cummings was prolific in his output. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays. Married several times, Cummings spent the last three decades of his life with Marion Morehouse. He died in 1962 in New Hampshire. The following three poems were recorded at the YMHA Poetry Center in New York City in 1959.
E.E. Cummings: anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
E.E. Cummings: as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame
as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
—long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung
or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common’s rare and millstones float
—long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late
worms are the words but joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
E.E. Cummings: love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
That was E.E. Cummings recorded at the YMHA Poetry Center in New York Center in 1959, and used by permission of Live Write Publishing Corporation. You’ve been listening to the Essential Poets Podcast, produced by The Poetry Foundation in collaboration with poetryarchive.org. To learn more about E.E. Cummings and other essential poets, and to hear more poems, go to poetryfoundation.org.
