Charcoal sketch by E. E. Cummings
Houghton Library, Harvard University
___________
ACHIEVING THE TOGETHERCOLOURED INSTANT
DURING HIS CAREER, Cummings was well known for the frank celebration of sexual intercourse in his work. Yet he exercised a good deal of wit and skill in keeping these poems from descending into pornography, using wordplay, allusion, parody, extended metaphor, spacing, and form to deflect their erotic impact. Some are in sonnet form, a stanzaic arrangement that had been used for love poems ever since Petrarch. But toward the end of the Elizabethan period, Shakespeare introduced a contrasting approach with his “dark lady” sonnets, an anti-Petrarchan tradition that Cummings follows in “my girl’s tall,” with its play back and forth with “long hard” and “hard long” in the octave and the tough-minded vine imagery in the sestet. “0 It’s Nice To Get Up In,the slipshod mucous kiss” depends upon an allusion that most readers are unfamiliar with. It refers to a popular song that Harry Lauder rendered in his rich Scottish burr in the British music halls:
Oh, it’s nice to get up in the morning
When the sun is beginning to shine,
And it’s three or four or five o’clock
In the good old summer time...
“(ponder,darling,these busted statues” is a hard-grained item in the carpe diem tradition, with its echoes of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” “she being Brand” is a comic treatment that pokes fun, too, at the American male’s love affair with the automobile.
The last four poems in this section are more serious and more direct in their handling. The dialogue of former lovers meeting in “think of if:not so long ago” builds in nostalgic stages toward its conclusion. All of the next three develop the theme of a new sense of self that is attained in sexual union. The last of them, “i like my body when it is with your,” in its delicacy of statement and its simplicity of repeated phrasing, stands as the best erotic poem Cummings ever wrote.
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.
O It’s Nice To Get Up In,the slipshod mucous kiss
of her riant belly’s fooling bore
—When The Sun Begins To(with a phrasing crease
of hot subliminal lips,as if a score
of youngest angels suddenly should stretch neat necks
just to see how always squirms
the skilful mystery of Hell)me suddenly
grips in chuckles of supreme sex.
In The Good Old Summer Time.
My gorgeous bullet in tickling intuitive flight
aches,just,simply,into,her. Thirsty
stirring. (Must be summer. Hush. Worms.)
—eh? I’m
not. Again. Hush. God. Please hold. Tight
(ponder,darling,these busted statues
of yon motheaten forum be aware
notice what hath remained
—the stone cringes
clinging to the stone,how obsolete
lips utter their extant smile....
remark
a few deleted of texture
or meaning monuments and dolls
resist Them Greediest Paws of careful
time all of which is extremely
unimportant)whereas Life
matters if or
when the your- and my-
idle vertical worthless
self unite in a peculiarly
momentary
partnership(to instigate
constructive
Horizontal
business....even so,let us make haste
—consider well this ruined aqueduct
lady,
which used to lead something into somewhere)
she being Brand
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having
thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.
K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and
again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity
avenue i touched the accelerator and give
her the juice,good
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and
brought allof her tremB
-ling
to a:dead.
stand-
;Still)
n w
O
h
S
LoW
h
myGODye
s s
“think of it:not so long ago
this was a village”
“yes;i know”
“of human beings who prayed and sang:
or am i wrong?”
“no,you’re not wrong”
“and worked like hell six days out of seven”
“to die as they lived:in the hope of heaven”
“didn’t two roads meet here?”
“they did;
and over yonder a schoolhouse stood”
“do i remember a girl with blue-
sky eyes and sun-yellow hair?”
“do you?”
“absolutely”
“that’s very odd,
for i’ve never forgotten one frecklefaced lad”
“what could have happened to her and him?”
“maybe they waked and called it a dream”
“in this dream were there green and gold
meadows?”
“through which a lazy brook strolled”
“wonder if clover still smells that way;
up in the mow”
“full of newmown hay”
“and the shadows and sounds and silences”
“yes,a barn could be a magical place”
“nothing’s the same:is it”
remains,my friend;and always will”
“namely?”
“if any woman knows,
one man in a million ought to guess”
“what of the dreams that never die?”
“turn to your left at the end of the sky“
“where are the girls whose breasts begin?”
“under the boys who fish with a pin”
look
my fingers,which
touched you
and your warmth and crisp
littleness
—see?do not resemble my
fingers. My wrists hands
which held carefully the soft silence
of you(and your body
smile eyes feet hands)
are different
from what they were. My arms
in which all of you lay folded
quietly,like a
leaf or some flower
newly made by Spring
Herself,are not my
arms. I do not recognise
as myself this which i find before
me in a mirror. i do
not believe
i have ever seen these things;
and who is slenderer
taller than
myself has entered and become such
lips as i use to talk with,
a new person is alive and
gestures with my
or it is perhaps you who
with my voice
are
playing.
sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant
the moment pleasantly frightful
when,her mouth suddenly rising,wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new