9. (e.e. cummings)

Fun fact: I just learned that e. e. (cummings) stands for Edward Estlin! A neat middle name. Anyhoo, today's poem is the simply titled '9.'

Poets.org categorizes this poem as a poem about passion and sex. I can see passion and romantic entanglement here (not quite sex but somewhere like that). Although, it's not an unbridled passion. The main image is that of a clock - a thing of rigid order. I think that's where the interest (for me) in this poem comes from. After all, it's a love/passion poem that doesn't really describe the people or their features - instead, it goes on about a clock. The tics and tocs of the clock he is describing are the kisses, the acts of love. And that's interesting. No?

Favorite line: "there are so many tictoc / clocks everywhere telling people / what toctic time it is"

there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21421#sthash.QOFy4KJv.dpuf

Spring is like a perhaps hand (E. E. Cummings)

Today has been gorgeous. It was the first time I haven't worn a coat all day. Just glorious.(Perhaps winter has been a tad too long for me this year.)Anyways, this poem by e.e. cummings was immediately appealing to me.

Yesterday was not a good weather day. A bit chilly. So today was exactly as cummings describes: "comes carefully/out of Nowhere". Good deal.

I like how the two single, stand-alone lines make a couplet. "changing everything carefully//without breaking anything." And that makes for a pretty pat definition of spring. Everything is altered, made new. Nothing is broken, since it's all natural, part of a cycle. It's just a shift.

Favorite line: "changing everything carefully"

i sing of Olaf glad and big (e.e. cummings)

I swear, I think if you polled every high schooler in the U.S. their favorite poet would be e.e. cummings. Because his poetry is graspable. Because his poetry is unique in the sense that he uses little capitalization and hardly any punctuation. Which is not to say that is isn't great. He's not my personal favorite though I do like this particular poem even though it's not very pleasant.

It's the only political poem I know of. Like many e.e. cummings poems this poem uses parentheses creatively. It tells a story and I do love a good story. I wonder when this poem was published. It seems like a Vietnam War poem, though I don't have specifics why I think so. Something about the phrase "conscientious object-or."

Favorite line: "unless statistics lie he was/more brave than me:more blond than you."