poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

Elizabeth... I think this poem is talking about how great it is to just be a fool. They say that ignorance is bliss. I think that's what this peom is trying to say. He says that he doesn't care about the way people tell him he should live. He doesn't care about the rules and formalities. He's going to live life the way he wants to and he's going to love it. And he's not afraid of death either. Here's another cliche... death is only the beginning. I hope this clears some things up for you. ^-^

Ahhhhhhhh, I love this poem :)

this poem rejects the importance of intellectualism, in favor of romantic love. The flutter of his girlfriend's eyelashes is more important than any rational theorem he could come up with. In the end, it is better to have been loved than to be smart.

I've been an avid reader of cummings since I was 14 (i'm 25 now), and this is definitely one of my favorites of all his poetry. i love the line, "my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom"

It is a personal struggle. Does he give up thought and reason for beauty and sex? He cant talk to her, but he feels her beauty and he wants that and is willing to give up reason and thought for her.

I have thought for years that this is one of the great love poems.

this poem is great for many reasons. here are a few:

the flow of the words when the poem is read or recited, the many sound devices used (rhyme, assonance, alliteration), the sensual imagery, and the witty expressions of love all work brilliantly to truly arouse feeling first for the reader.

the poem is a self-reflective discussion of cummings' poetic style and technique. as the poem says, "who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you," cummings breaks syntactical rules in an attempt to most purely penetrate the reader's emotions by surpassing the normal thought processing, based somewhat on expectation and structural recognition, associated with reading.

"And death i think is no parenthesis"

Although i love the romantic (love) quality of the poem, this is one of my favorite lines. Parentheses are used to add information to a text FROM which the words in parentheses are set apart. Therefore, this line means that a person cannot add anything more to his/her life after he/she dies. Thus, carpe diem!

I agree that this is one of the greatest love poems of all time. Cummings rejects reason and encourages us to do the same. One cannot restrict oneself to the rules laid out by society and to live truly, is to live solely guided on emotional instinct. There is no systematic equation for love and in every line of this poem, Cummings demonstates that. I love that Cummings can jumble a poem to the extent that it appears to be pure nonsense on the surface, but incredibly beautiful the deeper you emmerse yourself.

In my opinion, this is the most beautiful poem of e.e. cummings that I've read (and it's my favorite of his-- probably ever). In this poem, cummings portrays a passionate, beautiful love that is simple, yet complete.
BTW, *small* error in the punctuation. The line in question should read:

we are for eachother:then

that's all! small, I know; but I just thought I'd point it out.

Jeremy mentioned earlier that he thinks the line about death being no parenthesis is an existential encouragement to live for today. My own interpretation is that death is not *merely* a parentheses, that the things that happen after death are so significant that they would merit their own paragraph and should not be relegated to the role of an afterthought.

However, his interpretation never occurred to me until I read his comments and it gave the poem a fresh possibility. Thanks Jeremy!