poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

I need help! I was told to answer the following quesiton: What ambiguities in language do these poems ride on? At what point were you first aware of these double meaning? Why do I think cummings and Blake uses an extended metaphor to develop out his work? Can I get feedback AsAP?

One of the best poems about sex ever written.

If you read the poem beyond a surface level you can see that this is a peom about a man taking a woman's virginity. Just think of the car as the girl being deflowered.

I think the poem is about a woman being deflowered.

having sex with a virgin. duh.

I enjoy the metaphor. she is a vehicle for his pleasure. he goes "right to it," manipulates her body to react, to feed , to accelerate his impending orgasm. and when she expectedly rejects his aggression sliding "into reverse" he reveals his frustration: "what the hell."

e.e. cummings delivers a powerful ending. her trembling is not relieved , not consoled, but brought to a standstill, a dead one. it is beyond a physical reaction to the loss of such "precious" virginity. it is a loss of something more; the disappointment that weighs down fallen expectations, the death of a dream.

"What ambiguities in language do these poems 'ride' on?"

The answer is in the question!

The most lovely and beautiful double entendre(sp, sorry) I have ever, in my pitiful life, read.

The last stanza is not about the loss of such precious virginity and teh accompanying fallen expectations as much as it is referring the the after-effects of the orgasm that she just experienced.

i agree with domina

leave it to a guy (richard) to translate the dead stand-still to the after effects of an orgasm. it's interesting to get see gender-based differences in translations. it's very understandable for a guy to view it as the let down after an orgasm because guys like to think that, due to their sexual prowess, girls will no doubt have orgasms. however, i have heard that women usually do not experience an organsm their first time.

leaving the arena of sexual physiology, the description of the stand-still as being "dead" must be addressed. although in elizabethan times, "to die" was used to mean "to have an orgasm," i doubt that cummings is alluding to an elizabethan term. instead, i like domina's explanation that "dead" refers to the death of the woman's virginity. and domina's comment about "death of a dream" is very touching.

although this is an ingeneous poem, does anybody else find it disturbing that driving a car is used as a metaphor for HAVING sex? and that the woman is reduced to a machine?