I’ve always loved e.e. cummings, particularly when I was a teenager, and during a certain period he was a big influence on some of the (mostly awful) poetry I wrote. I’m not writing much poetry these days, but it’s hard not to be inspired by the way he made the familiarities of our old language seem new, different, and young. So here’s to youth, and poetry, and love, with a sonnet from old e.e.:<\/p>\n
you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear<\/p>\n
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love<\/p>\n
whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time<\/p>\n
that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.<\/p>\n
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance<\/p>\n
The last two lines get me every time. I also love “the foetal grave called progress”–whew. For more e.e. cummings, visit American Poems<\/a>. <\/p>\n Today’s Poetry Friday is hosted at Sarah Reinhard’s blog<\/a>. I’m already enjoying it, especially Jama Rattigan’s wonderful reminder of the accidental poetry of George W. Bush<\/a>. <\/p>\n