Selected Poems E.E. Cummings

FOR A PROFESSED DEVOTEE of the natural world, Cummings spent a great deal of time in cities, especially New York, which was his home for forty-five years, although he traveled frequently to Paris, Rome, Venice, and other great centers of European culture. Indeed, his anticivilization stance was a self-deceiving pose. He could hardly have existed without the world of art and literature that nurtured him.

Thus, his books are filled with poems reflective of the urban scene, most of them merely descriptive or anecdotal, but he used the material for working up his visual linguistic presentations. His common practice was to keep a personal notebook or diary with him at all times, and he frequently recorded what he encountered on the streets or in the cafés and what he observed of his urban surroundings. Often, after an event had lain mellowing in his notebook for some time,it would emerge as a source for a poem.

In spite of their simplicity, the poems in this section frequently served as a trial for a literary experiment (as the Cummings papers in the Houghton Library make clear), although they do not look as if that were so. “the hours rise up” was once an exercise in long-lined Whitmanesque free verse, but Cummings later purified it and gave it a dreamlike quality, “logeorge” was an early tryout for the ways that spacing on the page could suggest the features of a dialogue and the emotions of speakers. “i was sitting in mcsorley’s” was written at a time when Cummings was experimenting with sound patterns: he compiled lists of words that have rhyme and consonance—like dint, grin, point, glint, squint, and wink—or words that begin or end with a group of similar sounds—like piddle, spittle, topple, wobble, dribble, and gobble. He thought of the work as a sound painting, even though it moved from description into incident (an evil apparition in a saloon), “stinging” developed while he was going beyond the influence of the Imagist movement into poems that developed visually.

the hours rise up putting off stars and it is

dawn

into the street of the sky light walks scattering poems

on earth a candle is

extinguished the city

wakes

with a song upon her

mouth having death in her eyes

and it is dawn

the world

goes forth to murder dreams....

i see in the street where strong

men are digging bread

and i see the brutal faces of

people contented hideous hopeless cruel happy

and it is day,

in the mirror

i see a frail

man

dreaming

dreams

dreams in the mirror

and it

is dusk on earth

a candle is lighted

and it is dark.

the people are in their houses

the frail man is in his bed

the city

sleeps with death upon her mouth having a song in her eyes

the hours descend,

putting on stars....

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

but the other

day i was passing a certain

gate, rain

fell(as it will

in spring)

ropes

of silver gliding from sunny

thunder into freshness

as if god’s flowers were

pulling upon bells of

gold i looked

and

thought to myself Death

and will You with

elaborate fingers possibly touch

the pink hollyhock existence whose

pansy eyes look from morning till

night into the street

unchangingly the always

old lady always sitting in her

gentle window like

a reminiscence

partaken

softly at whose gate smile

always the chosen

flowers of reminding

logeorge

wellifitisn’t eddy how’s the boy

grandhave youheard

shoot

you knowjim

goodscout well

married

the hellyousay

whoto

‘member ritagail

do i remember rita what’sthejoke

well

goddam

don’ttakeit too hard old boy

sayare you kidding me because ifyouare byhell

easyall george watchyourstep old fellow

christ

that that

mut

the skinny voice

of the leatherfaced

woman with the crimson

nose and coquettishly-

cocked bonnet

having ceased the

captain

announces that as three

dimes seven nickels and ten

pennies have been deposited upon

the drum there is need

of just twenty five cents

dear friends

to make it an even

dollar whereupon

the Divine Average who was

attracted by the inspired

sister’s howling moves

off

will anyone tell him why he should

blow two bits for the coming of Christ Jesus

???

nix,kid

a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back

dressed in fifteenthrate ideas

wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less

emancipated evening

had in return for consciousness

endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal

citizens did graze at pause

then fired by hypercivic zeal

sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook

of pinkest vomit out of eyes

which noticed nobody he looked

as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest

its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt

while the mute trouserfly confessed

a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke

i put him all into my arms

and staggered banged with terror through

a million billion trillion stars

i was sitting in mcsorley’s. outside it was New York and beauti-

fully snowing.

Inside snug and evil. the slobbering walls filthily push witless

creases of screaming warmth chuck pillows are noise funnily swallows

swallowing revolvingly pompous a the swallowed mottle with smooth or

a but of rapidly goes gobs the and of flecks of and a chatter sobbings

intersect with which distinct disks of graceful oath,upsoarings the

break on ceiling-flatness

the Bar.tinking luscious jigs dint of ripe silver with warmlyish

wetflat splurging smells waltz the glush of squirting taps plus slush

of foam knocked off and a faint piddle-of-drops she says I ploc spittle

what the lands thaz me kid in no sir hopping sawdust you kiddo he’s a

palping wreaths of badly Yep cigars who jim him why gluey grins topple

together eyes pout gestures stickily point made glints squinting who’s

a wink bum-nothing and money fuzzily mouths take big wobbly foot-steps

every goggle cent of it get out ears dribbles soft right old feller

belch the chap hie summore eh chuckles skulch....

and i was sitting in the din thinking drinking the ale,which never

lets you grow old blinking at the low ceiling my being pleasantly was

punctuated by the always retchings of a worthless lamp.

when With a minute terrif iceffort one dirty squeal of soiling light

yanKing from bushy obscurity a bald greenish foetal head established

It suddenly upon the huge neck around whose unwashed sonorous muscle

the filth of a collar hung gently.

(spattered)by this instant of semiluminous nausea A vast wordless

nondescript genie of trunk trickled firmly in to one exactly-mutilated

ghost of a chair,

a;domeshaped interval of complete plasticity,shoulders,sprouted the

extraordinary arms through an angle of ridiculous velocity commenting

upon an unclean table,and,whose distended immense Both paws slowly

loved a dinted mug

gone Darkness it was so near to me,i ask of shadow won’t you have a drink?

(the eternal perpetual question)

Inside snugandevil. i was sitting in mcsorley’s It,did not answer.

outside.(it was New York and beautifully,snowing....

that melancholy

fellow’ll play

his handorgan

until you say

“i want a fortune”

.At which(smiling)he stops:

& pick

ing up a magical stick

t,a,p,s

this dingy cage:then with a ghost

’s rainfaint windthin

voice-which-is

no-voice sobcries

“paw?lee”

—whereupon out(S10

wLy)steps(to

mount the wand)a by no

means almost

white morethanPerson;who

(riding through space

to diminutive this

opened drawer)tweak

S with his brutebeak

one fatal faded(pinkish or

yellowish maybe)piece

of pitiful paper—

but now,as Mr bowing Cockatoo

proffers the meaning of the stars

14th st dis(because my tears

are full of eyes)appears. Because

only the truest things always

are true because they can’t be true

Paris;this April sunset completely utters;

utters serenely silently a cathedral

before whose upward lean magnificent face

the streets turn young with rain,

spiral acres of bloated rose

coiled within cobalt miles of sky

yield to and heed

the mauve

of twilight(who slenderly descends,

daintily carrying in her eyes the dangerous first stars)

people move love hurry in a gently

arriving gloom and

see!(the new moon

fills abruptly with sudden silver

these torn pockets of lame and begging colour)while

there and here the lithe indolent prostitute

Night,argues

with certain houses

stinging

gold swarms

upon the spires

silver

chants the litanies the

great bells are ringing with rose

the lewd fat bells

and a tall

wind

is dragging

the

sea

with

dream

-S