POETRY

Richard Kennedy (Ed.). (1994). E. E. Cummings Selected Poems.

Cummings earned an MA at Harvard in English and the Classics...he was also a professional painter, WWI ambulance driver in France, and nature lover.

Cummings' mother encouraged him to keep a journal as a boy...he spent May-Oct (5 months a year) at Joy Farm from the time of his father's death every year. He married 3 of the most beautiful women in the US, the last for 40 years.

Cummings' writing style often uses lower case letters, especially in referencing himself as "i"...he uses space on the page to convey nonverbal meaning and delights in word play, puns, intentional misspellings, word breaks, parentheses, rhyme...

Most of the poems read like riddles/mysteries to me, they need to be read slowly, even them, some of the poems seem incomprehensible...i remember reading some of his poems as a boy in an english literature class and now i wanted to dig deeper...overall, i am disappointed in this selection of his poems because i do not understand the meaning(s) of most of them, the play of words is often beyond me...however, his love of nature pomes, and the allusions to sex without pornography poems, were my favorites.

Practice

keep a journal everywhere you go (a pocket size journal with a small pen/pencil--NOT a phone that you text/type into)...jot down things that catch your sensorium for one week, and at the end of the week, review what you wrote and take some time to create a poem that captures some of the meaning in the past week of your life...share the poem with one other person within 24 hours of writing and gauge their reaction...if fun, do the practice again for a 2nd week...continue as long as you find joy and meaning in the practice.