Monday, February 20, 2012

The poetic genius of e.e.cummings.

I love the man. My first real taste of him was way back in my second year degree, when this extremely well-articulated and sharp literature professor took us through the discourse on 'Anyone lived in a pretty how town'. As was her habit, she didn't stop there, but went on to introduce us to more wonders of his poetry.
I find him interesting and love his poems because they're so...against everything a poem was dictated to be. He always signed his name in lower case. His utter disregard for commas and everything that goes with them, seen in poems that are unconventional with twists and turns of vocabulary, is absolutely worship-worthy, and he's explored every possible facet of the linguistic system. It's like i can imagine him flicking away the rulebook of poetry with a careless finger almost as if it were a speck of dirt on his shirt, and sitting down to pen a work of art that was always triggered by the question "so how am i going to mindf*** the literary world today?" His use of parenthesis, the syntax, the flow of the words, the layout - what absolute pleasure each one of his poems is to read!
Look at this one, for example:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The beauty of it lies in the way he's broken up the words - to imitate the falling of a leaf.
I've got him on my Flipkart wishlist. Now all i need to do is get his books in my hands. Soon, e.e. Soon.

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