The goings and comings of e.e. cummings is no topic to pick if you’re courting glory. Who’s he – e.e. – a poet? Screw it! Our world’s collapsing, who needs poets!
A clown, even in his time, with his wording tricks, orthography spattered like a dropped egg, outraging grammar and grammas, nouning verbs, verbing nouns… So disrespectful this nonconformity, so impudent this refugee from the regulation of expectation. No fence? The offense!
Peculiarity nowadays is no big whoops, no lexical shenanigans aggrieve – because so few read. Back in his day (1894-1962), folks wondered, was e.e. serious, or a kid brother wildly goofing to attract his elders’ attention? Even his name, in lower case, e. e., was he kidding? Modernity frowned on “light” verse. Serious poems recruited serious readers. “Wasteland,” not Graceland, fella, if we’re talking literature.
Retirement frees a reader from the confinement of consensus. Ambling an anthology, up pops e.e.’s elegy for his dad. Give it a shot, why not?
e.e.’s a jester, for sure, sometimes frantic in his antics, word-mashes, somersaults, assaults (and peppers). Pranking’s his schtick, a naughty nuttiness his readers expect. e.e. – he-he!
But beneath the oddity, in this case, the zesty disarrangement makes the language fresh.
Read the poem below if you haven’t already. If it doesn’t woo you, no worries, another time.
What do you hear in the son’s loopy lament? e.e. was in his early thirties when his dad was killed in a car crash.
I hear grief too lacerating to express except by pranking, dancing, prancing not to collapse, grasping for ironies like flotsam not to drown. We can’t think and feel simultaneously, only sequentially. This elegy demands thought, each line a weird combination, complication. What do these phrases mean – “dooms of love,” “sames of am,” “haves of give” and the others after? I sense the young-manly poet cavorting for his dad. What a clever lad!
The sing-song quatrains with their simple rhymes recall nursery ditties, while the text demands a college-grade intellect at least. Each wild line dares us to decode, the game of reading distracting from the pain of dying.
Dear dad, preacher and font of love, crackles to life in his poet-son’s prickly praise. By the close of the seventeen quatrains, we love dad too. Few eulogies conjure a soul so large.
Rhythms rollick while meanings resist, tensing the reader, as if we’re being hurried through a spectacular museum. Let me pause, please, before “dooms of love,” and the rest to unwrap their sense!
A son’s love isn’t easily shown. Sons quarrel with dads to define themselves; their griefs gravitate to briefs. e.e. loves his dad without reservation, hesitation, as if he hovered angelically beyond reproach. We envy the entirety of his homage.
The father’s goodness evolves into a parable of how we all should be.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy father moved through theys of we,singing each new leaf out of each tree(and every child was sure that springdanced when she heard my father sing)
A life-giver! – whose life implicitly rebuked those less generous, attentive, alive:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedthen let men kill which cannot share,let blood and flesh be mud and mire,scheming imagine, passion willed,freedom a drug that’s bought and sold.
e.e.’s love for his dad echoes Hamlet’s: “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” Hamlet and e.e. loved their dads for loving. How we need such healing souls in our dire hour..
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedi say though hate were why men breathe—because my Father lived his soullove is the whole and more than all
Amen.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published*
my father moved through dooms of lovethrough sames of am through haves of give,singing each morning out of each nightmy father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful whereturned at his glance to shining here;that if (so timid air is firm)under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied whichfloats the first who, his april touchdrove sleeping selves to swarm their fateswoke dreamers to their ghostly roots
and should some why completely weepmy father’s fingers brought her sleep:vainly no smallest voice might cryfor he could feel the mountains grow.
Lifting the valleys of the seamy father moved through griefs of joy;praising a forehead called the moonsinging desire into begin
joy was his song and joy so purea heart of star by him could steerand pure so now and now so yesthe wrists of twilight would rejoice
keen as midsummer’s keen beyondconceiving mind of sun will stand,so strictly (over utmost himso hugely) stood my father’s dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:no hungry man but wished him food;no cripple wouldn’t creep one mileuphill to only see him smile.
Scorning the Pomp of must and shallmy father moved through dooms of feel;his anger was as right as rainhis pity was as green as grain
septembering arms of year extendless humbly wealth to foe and friendthan he to foolish and to wise offered immeasurable is
proudly and (by octobering flamebeckoned) as earth will downward climb,so naked for immortal workhis shoulders marched against the dark
his sorrow was as true as bread:no liar looked him in the head;if every friend became his foehe’d laugh and build a world with snow.
My father moved through theys of we,singing each new leaf out of each tree(and every child was sure that springdanced when she heard my father sing)
then let men kill which cannot share,let blood and flesh be mud and mire,scheming imagine, passion willed,freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
giving to steal and cruel kind,a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,to differ a disease of same,conform the pinnacle of am
though dull were all we taste as bright,bitter all utterly things sweet,maggoty minus and dumb deathall we inherit, all bequeath
and nothing quite so least as truth—i say though hate were why men breathe—because my Father lived his soullove is the whole and more than all