E.E. Cummings
Cummings
Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings), the renowned American poet, was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is widely recognized for his poetry. His poetic sense is noted "for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to convey a joyful, living awareness of sex and love" ("Cummings, E.E."). Cummings is also known as a talented artist. Several one-man shows have been held for exhibiting the distinguished paintings and drawings of the great poet cum artist.
His Life in a Nutshell
Early Life
Cummings, at one occasion, said "I did not decide to become a poet -- I was always writing poetry" (as qtd in eef 5).
It was his mother, ebecca Cummings, who had encouraged his only son, Estlin, to write start writing poetry from a very early age. He was only three years old when Cummings came out with his first original poem that was:
"Oh my little birdie oh
With…...
mlaReferences
"Cummings, E.E." The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2009. Questia. Web. 23 Apr. 2012.
Reef, C.E.E. Cummings: A Poet's Life. New York: Clarion Books, 2006. Web. 23 Apr. 2012.
EE Cummings
The word choice in ee cummings' "god america I" specifically directs the reader to the sarcastic overtones in the poem, in particular his criticism of American patriotism. The reader can understand the poem better when he or she understands that many of the words are intended as sarcasm. This shapes his argument in a more critical light. ritten in 1926, the poem conveyed cynicism at a point in time when America's economy was booming and patriotism was running at a high after the Great ar, but cummings saw that there were still a lot of reasons to make the case that blind patriotism was unwarranted.
In the opening line he states "next of course to god america…," showing two key elements of sarcasm immediately. The "of course" is a flippant reaction to the need to "of course" love god, because that is a given in American society at the time.…...
mlaWorks Cited:
Cummings, ee. (1926) next of course to god america i. In possession of the author.
" (p. 169) This shows that Cummings was deeply interested in shaking the foundations of institutionalization. Not every critic loved his work though. There are some who felt that Cummings satire and sex poems are nothing but "bits of sarcasm, fancy invective, and nose-thumbings." (Horton and Mangan, p. 88) While we may not agree with this view, it is true that some of Cummings' poems seem to serve no real purpose at all.
Cummings had a strong penchant for romanticism. He has often written about his pleasure derived from nature, love and sex. Many of his love poems are inspired by his love experiences from his three marriages. For example, his poems:"May my heart always be open to little," "birds who are the secrets of living," "whatever they sing is better than to know" and "and if men should not hear them men are old" explores everything from love to lust…...
mlaBibliography biography of Cummings." Retrieved online 25th Jan 2007:
http://drake.marin.k12.ca.us/stuwork/comacad/poets/eecummings/eebiopage.html
Linda Martin, Cummings- Him and Me. 1992. Retrieved online 25th Jan 2007:
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Wagner1.htm
Linda Wagner Martin
ee cummings "she being brand new"
At its surface, E.E. Cummings's poem, "she being Brand/-new" appears to be a poem about a man getting to know his way around a brand new car. The unnamed narrator of the poem describes each nuance as he discovers it and allows the reader to understand the complications that arise when adjusting to a new car. Consequently, "she being Brand/-new" is an extended metaphor for a relationship between the narrator and a woman and the adjustments he must make to learn what she enjoys and does not enjoy as the relationships shifts and sex is introduced. Through the use of imagery, Cummings is able to demonstrate how adjusting to a new car is similar to adjusting to a new sexual partner.
At the beginning of the poem, Cummings leaves the poem open to interpretation by stating, "she being Brand-new; and you/know consequently a/little stiff I was…...
Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop" by WB Yeats
This is one of the shortest poems by WB Yeats though has a lot of consistency with the other poems that he wrote before and even after this poem. He is known to be preoccupied by the conflicts and the frictions that exist between cultures, religions, races, classes and the several other categorizations that exist among human beings. He has often used the mouthpiece called Jane in many of his poems and Yeats employs the same character here as the persona. The life that one chooses to live is the satisfying life that the person would like to remain in and no one should try to make them forfeit the chosen life as Jane indicates by rejecting the invitation by the bishop to change her life.
Apparently Jane is an old woman who is not very sane but the insanity gives her…...
Modernist literature refers to a literary period from the first half of the 20th century, one that reacted to the external influences of an increasingly industrialized society, and one that was becoming more and more globalized. This was a population of people who had been hardened and drained by two world wars. This was a population of people who were pondering the future of humanity, human existence, the human condition and their place in the world. When compared to the romantic period, modernism appears edgier and less serene. The romantic period had more of a focus on the natural world and the experience of being; modernism focused more on the inner self, seeing more of a decline and fraught fragmentation with the external world. From a literary perspective, the period meant a subversion of typical norms: modernist prose and poetry played with structure and form in ways that readers weren’t…...
Dylan Thomas
In "Elegy," Dylan Thomas uses the connection of his father being blind, to talk about his father's death. This poem is about Thomas's father's death, but explains how Thomas felt about his father. His father was blind, and Thomas felt that he had to see things for his father. The following quotes explain this: "...broken and blind he died/.../the darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed/.../Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw/Through his unseeing eyes.../.../Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide/.../and old blind man is with me where I go/alking in the meadows of his son's eye." The first line of the quote states he's blind, and through the next few lines of the poem, it keeps hinting about darkness and how Thomas's father was blind. It then starts talking about how Thomas saw through his father's eyes. You see this in the quote…...
mlaWorks Cited
Eich, Marty. "e.e. cummings: The life of America's Experimental Poet." The American Poetry Web. 17 Feb. 2005 http://titan.iwu.edu/~wchapman/americanpoetryweb/eecbio.html#dooms..
Gardner, H. Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership. New York:
BasicBooks Harper Collins, 1995.
Thomas, Dylan. The Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions
Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken" (lines 18-20):
In the final lines of this poem, the narrator says some of the most famous lines in American poetry: "I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference" (19-20). Many have interpreted these lines as a celebration of individuality, but on closer inspection, it becomes evident that in reality, the narrator is lamenting that he has made these choices. Instead of following the path of others, he has gone on his own path. His conclusion is that it was this choice, choosing "the path less travelled by" that has marked the rest of his life. The tone of the piece is not one of self-congratulation but rather depression and despondency. He does not say that he regrets the choices that he has made, but acknowledges that his life would be very different had he made other choices.
T.S.…...
mlaWorks Cited:
Cummings, e.e. "Nobody Loses All the Time." Print.
Dickey, James L. "Cherrylog Road." Print.
Eliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Print.
Frost, Robert. "Birches." Literature. 11th Ed. 1042-1043. Print.
In the poetic style, I was inspired by ee cummings to use short sentences to convey the man's thought processes in the morning, and also cumming's subject choice, which is usually about loneliness and loss and the inability to express what one is feeling in concrete terms. I tried to break up the poem in significant places, using line breaks to emphasize important words like "left" and "loss" rather than strictly adhering to conventional sentence breaks at the end of complete thoughts.
From Baraka's influence, I was inspired to include a reference to the current political situation in Iraq. I wanted this reference to be realistic -- most of us get our input about politics in snatches, from the television news. I wanted to create a sense of irony too that the soldiers want to communicate and get home, while the man wants to leave his home and get to work…...
Human Suffering in the Midst of Progress in the orks of EE Cummings & Mark Rothko
At the turn of the 20th century, American culture has flourished significantly, especially with the emergence of important fields of discipline that evoke individualism and free expression in works of art created by American artists. This phenomenon is especially evident after orld ar II, where the conflict among the world's nations had affected the psyche of American society and nation, one of the major players in the recently concluded war. After II, different lifestyles have emerged in the American society: consumerism, urbanism, and hedonism. These lifestyles gave birth to individualism and freedom of expression among people, especially now that the mass media made it possible for the society to exchange and extend messages and information to people located in different areas. However, despite these developments in American life, people have initially become disillusioned and…...
mlaWorks Cited
Rothko, M. "Gethsemane" (painting). National Gallery of Art. Available at http://www.nga.gov .
A cummings, e. e. "pity this monster, manunkind." Available at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/8454/554.htm.
Latashia Weston
Original Work
Poem -- Version 1: "next to of course god america i"
"next to of course god america i" E.E. Cummings
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Short Writing: Paraphrasing a scene from a play
Revised Work
Short Fiction -- John Updike -- "A&P"
Short Writing: Describing a Poem
Short Writing: Paraphrasing a scene from a play
Short Story - Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Short Story - A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Glossary
Parody
Symbolism
Theme
Irony
Alliteration
Postmodern
Motif
Style
Character development
In my literary analysis essays, I have endeavored to discover why I thought an author wrote a particular piece, how they think about their work, and why they made the choices they did with regard to theme, character development, and use of literary devices. I have also attempted to make my own perspective transparent in my writing, and through this effort, understand more about the work of these authors.
Original Work
Poem -- Version 1: "next to of course god america i"
E.E. Cummings's poem…...
Twilight" by Louise Gluck and Stephen Crane's "Four Poems" on the Theme of Futility
The poem "Twilight" by Louise Gluck describes a specific moment in time of the subject's life, the only point during his day when he can experience any sense of freedom in his otherwise futile existence. This is highlighted in the first words of the poem "All day he works at his cousin's mill, / so when he gets home at night, he always sits at this one window, / sees one time of day, twilight." During the day he is a prisoner of his office and all he can observe of nature is the window showcasing "a squared-off landscape / representing the world." The word "representing" is significant, given that Gluck is suggesting by implication that the landscape in the window merely represents reality and is not reality itself, It is through this window that the…...
Imagist poetry is in many ways the essence of what poetry strives to be -- it is concise, concrete, and creates a visual image through carefully selected language. As a poetic movement, Imagism began around 1912 with poetry by Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle (usually written H.D.), among others, and the movement carried on into the twentieth century to produce some very popular and highly expressive works. The Imagists produced four anthologies of their work -- Des Imagistes, 1914; Some Imagists, 1915, 1916, 1917; and the magazines Poetry (from 1912) and The Egoist (from 1914); and these included the work of a dozen or more Imagist poets. It has been some time since a strong collection of Imagist poetry has been made, and this anthology is intended to present some of the works that help define this poetic movement.
The approach is largely chronological, carrying the reader from early…...
Take as an example McDonald's venture to extend its business operations in countries within the Asian region. Through globalization, the company has learned to adapt to the culture of the country it invests in. Examples of such adjustments are the introduction of rice in most of the meal offerings of McDonald's in the Philippines, inclusion of spicy foods in McDonald's menus in India, and the establishment of large McDonald's buildings in China in order to accommodate the large number of consumers that patronize the fast food chain. These are examples of companies' conscious effort to recognize globalization and its principles.
ibliography
Consensus." Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus.
Feminist Utopia." Available at http://www.amazoncastle.com/feminism/ecocult.shtml.
Introduction to globalization." Available at http://www.globalization.com/intro.cfm?page_id=1321.
Positivism." Available at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/mach1.htm.
Postmodernism and its critics." Available at http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm.
Socialization." Available at http://anthro.palomar.edu/social/soc_1.htm....
mlaBibliography
Consensus." Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus .
Feminist Utopia." Available at http://www.amazoncastle.com/feminism/ecocult.shtml .
Introduction to globalization." Available at http://www.globalization.com/intro.cfm?page_id=1321 .
Positivism." Available at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/mach1.htm .
Too bad I didn't listen to my parents when they said, "Enjoy it now, for you'll never be young again." Or questioned, "Why are you always in such a big hurry to grow up?" Too bad I didn't realize that my older siblings were just as jealous of me having no responsibilities, as I was of them being older. Too bad that I did not have adult eyes in my child's body, so I could have seen all the wonderful things I was missing by dreaming about being older. I would like to see with adult eyes how great those New Year's parties were with my family, as we cuddled close together and watched the movies or television shows, ate popcorn, and drank bubbly non-alcoholic champagne. I would like to see with adult eyes how wonderful it was to go to story hour each week and just sing songs,…...
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