I Met E.E. Cummings

This is lovely Mizdi!

I really love this first lines “I saw you first in the lines you wrote, I heard you next on the lines you spoke.”

Simply lovely…hay…why are some people so great… so good at writing poems.
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Mizdi! Just when I thought I was getting somewhere, you’re words are so beautiful. Cummings is nothing compared to you my dear! Does this mean you’ve fallen once more, that hope springs eternal? As I read your words I am reminded of what I like to think……..no matter how far apart we are, we still see the same moon at night, at the same time, and we still breathe the same air that envelopes this world. So distance is only an inconvenience where the soul is concerned.
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Mizdi, This is so beautifully done! You’ve struck a chord and it reminds me of an old, dear friend. From across the sea, our eyes met. The same waves that were splashing against my calves carried her warmth … the same grains of sand that were caressing my toes had caressed hers only hours or days earlier …

The poet is E. E. Cummings, not CC. And you’ve missed that an important part of his poetry is its form, which you’ve mangled.

Mizdi, what a wonderful discovery, this page of yours here. e. e. cummings has inspired me in many deep and lifelong ways, more so than most anyone, as he has obviously inspired you now. I have many of his books of poetry and several of his biographies in my library. Most fascinating was learning more about his logic of form and syntaxes. He crafted his own poetic language inside of his English. His volumes of poetry still stand apart from most other poets. To Sarah’s point, e. e.’s work is novel for his structural twists/syntax in conveying his sentiments. That said, your mashup of his poetry to your own interpretive worth makes your version of his poems uniquely yours and interesting to read comparatively. His poetry is difficult to read aloud for most people, including me. To get a sense of how he recites them, his cadence and stall, you can listen to him read one of his poems, recorded in 1953 I believe: http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780739315378
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Thanks Mizdi,

I appreciate your reply and for your connecting with me on Blip.fm and Twitter. You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/macroshift

On the matter of the mashup, the purists have valid points, though I think that through your exercise to make the poem more approachable you make it your own — a good and mature process with things we value/adopt/adapt into our lives.

My only advice would be to add a brief disclaimer for the reader that the structure has been altered from the original, so that when someone encounters your version of the poem on the net, they know it is different than the original version.

I also encourage you to examine cummings’ style and write another poem in keeping with these traits. A fun exercise I have repeated for many years.

Namaste,

macroshift

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Another favorite poem of cummings, among others, for me is “anyone lived in a pretty how town” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15403

First stanza: (cummings’ poems have no names so the poems are titled by their first lines.)

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did
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