poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

i think how he wrote the title
(r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r) was clever cuz its underlined if rearranged just like a title should be hehe

I think that cummings is trying to say that no matter where you go and what you do during the course of your life, you remain esentially the same just as the grasshopper changes during the poem and moves around, but remains esentially the same grasshopper in the last line that appears in the first line.

i agree with rachel, the words are not important, it is how they are arranged. that is one of the things Mr. cummings wanted us to realize, i think he wanted us to spend time figuring it out. It is a poem you have to concentrate on.

I don't care for this poem much. So he did something erotic with somebody and finished his day off with a big meal. Wooh. Profound. This is the kind of thing I imagine guys talk about in the locker room. (Of course, I've never been in a locker room, so I have no proof that they don't discuss cooking recipes in there--recipes for things like chicken
and shrimp and french fries and buns
and mashed potatoes and gravy and
cole slaw.) Still, if other people find meaning in poetry like this, that's a good thing for them I guess. It's always good to appreciate poetry and it's always good to express oneself. To each his own.

i hope that this comment is of some help to someone, at least one person, who may be interested in some understanding i have been so lucky as to find through some biographical readings on cummings (see Dreams in the Mirror by richard s. kennedy...outstanding), as well as many of EE's letters to friends (ezra pound, william carlos williams...), and many of his letters to poetry lovers inquiring about his poems...(see collected letters of E.E. Cummings) :

This is obviously not a poem to be read aloud, as cummings clearly states in a letter of his to a fan, but it is also not a poem to be "read" by most conventional definitions of the verb. The poem can obviously mean different things to different people, and strike each and every one of us in a unique way. The poem, is not so much of a poem as it is an "IS, a verb". Yes, the "poem" describes the "ACTION...(IS)" of a grasshopper leaping into the air and returning to the ground, and the syntax of the poem has been verrrrrrry carefully plotted out by cummings in countless drafts and manuscripts. it is set the way it is set, because it IS, it creates the FEELING of the grasshopper's movement, of it's action, it's verb. We can feel the poem as it happens to us, as it acts on us, and the grasshopper, rather spasmadically, jumps into the air and returns. The poem is NOT to be read in any special way. IT is to be read however you'd like. And if it creates action, feeling, then Cummings himself is probably smiling from wherever he is today. We must all take a step back from this poem of his, and realize that is a verb and not a noun, it is a feeling and not a "poem", it is itself an individual, as the grasshopper jumps and falls from grace, to itself...

much love! I'D LOOOOVE TO DISCUSS some other literary "things"! just respond or email me or something or other...


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

[sic] ...

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

i havent looked at this poem in some years and a friend of mine in high school brought it to my attention the other day. after reading it this time, some new words stood out that i had passed off before. well, actually the whole poem stood out as never before.
as far as i can tell, and this may be a result of my other studies with postmodernism, this poem reaks of ee cummings' word destruction that he also pulls in other places.
the thought that came to mind is, what really is a grasshopper? if one were to rearrange a grasshopper to some gross anatomical level would it still be a grasshopper? and further, what is a grasshopper to begin with?
the poem then turns upon itself. the title being a rearrangement of the word grasshopper, it begs the question of "what is a poem?" if it looks different and sounds different is it still a poem?
inevitably this question turns on the reader. who am I? what makes a me? if I take me apart and put me in different organization, am i still me?

just a thought.

My comment above seems to have been misplaced somehow. I definitely don't find this poem pornographic. My comment was intended for a different poem, and I sort of wish I never made it, so let's just forget about it.

I think that some of you misunderstood Sherri. She was saying that the spacing used in the poem in this website is wrong, not the comments on the poem. She is right. The spacing in this form of the poem is wrong, becasue it wasn't done the way that Cummings intended it be. Though I hate to admit it, my english teacher is right in saying that everything done in a poem is done for a purpose. Cummings wrote it with different spacing and any other spacing that is used for his poem is wrong.

It often strikes me, as I look at cummings' poetry, that he had a very unique way of looking at the world. You know how there are people who hear words as images. Say 'table' and they picture a table. Versus others who hear 'table' and picture the letters t-a-b-l-e. It seems to me the cummings would see a table, and picture the letters. That may not make sense, but it is as if he manages to paint an actual and accurate picture using words. Like the grasshopper. With just a few simple, twisted up letters, can't you picture it all - the grasshopper, the grass, the dirt, the flowers, the smells? What an artist!

where do you get the word "himself" in the poem?