EE cummings selected poems and slowing down

Reading ee cummings’ poetry cover-to-cover has the overall effect of turning your brain into soup. The words twist and dance and slip into crevices where you don’t expect them to fit. And just when you think you’ve truly lost your mind, you find a nugget of tangible wisdom that opens your heart and makes you realize it was all so very worth it.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

p. 97

ee cummings is one of my favorite poets for exactly that reason.

This particular selection of poems intercepted my attention in a Waterstones while I was on the hunt for some Mary Oliver poetry. While I found both authors irresistibly calling out to me from the shelf, Oliver’s works happened to be (inexplicably) stupid expensive. So I left her behind for now.

cummings writes primarily about love, spring, nature, freedom, and war, and the intersections therein. He is a flagrant and deliberate rule-breaker. His work is stormy, sarcastic, crude and wily just as much as it is lyric, sweet and feely. You have to slow way down when you read it so as not to miss something.

I was unsure how his poetry would land with me considering all that’s happening right now. Romance and nature and freedom just seem like far away, intangible things that aren’t able to touch my life right now. So, would any of this really resonate?

But, of course, this turned out to be the perfect manual for remembering how to slow down and take in all the details of this life, especially when it feels like our snug, little snow-globe has been so rudely shaken.

all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)"

(p. 94)

I’m currently isolated in my flat, doing my best to stop the spread of Coronavirus as it rampages through London. Meanwhile, I’m feeling so much love pour into and out of my heart through the connectivity and support that the internet (thank GOD) offers me.

love is a deeper season
than reason;

(p. 79)

it is most mad and moonly

(p. 62)

While I’m missing the smells and sounds and feels of spring blossoming outside, I’m watching it unfurl through my window and also through the swelling buds of an orchid (the slowest of creatures) that I’m babysitting.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

(p. 94)

cummings reminded me of the endless gratitude I already have for the natural world and that I can keep it in my heart even if I can’t be in it quite yet…

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(p. 92)

I started making a point to read one poem each morning – first thing when I woke up, instead of looking at my phone or checking the news. In that way, ee shaped my intention and focus for every day in a positive, if not dreamy and still somehow grounded way.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

(p. 50)

cummings has a way of touching and illuminating some of the most meaningful whispers in my heart. He has words for the things that ignite the fires behind the choices I make about how to live and love and be and care. I was silly to think that this latest adventure in reading his work would be any different. So, thank you, mr. cummings, for writing your magic and sharing your joy and reminding me of my most always self.

Books & References

ee cummings selected poems 1923-1958
All the citations above are excerpts of cummings’ poems from this book. None of them are whole, complete poems in themselves.

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