I first encountered E.E. Cummings’ poetry during my freshman or sophomore year in college. I  must have been exposed to Cummings in high school though I have no recollection of it. One of the few books I have on my shelf from back in the Paleolithic age when I was in college is e.e. cummings: a selection of poems. The paperback copy with the simple white cover, no capitalized letters—not even in his name—the i’s dotted with green dots, and the O in “poems” filled in red like a jelly donut gave a hint to the whimsy and delight I would find inside.

Today, many pages have faded to brown and are unglued and loose though still in order. A painter and a writer, Cummings painted outside the lines in his poetry, playing with words, inventing new ones, mixing metaphors—”eyes talking”—gleefully violating normal syntax, and line structure. I got the sense he wrote many of his poems with a glint in his eye and his tongue pressed firmly against the inside of one cheek. He was of the opinion that “mostpeople” were not living or dead but unliving. I liked his poetry more than his politics (he was an ardent supporter of Joseph McCarthy). I well remember the bounce in “maggie and millie and molly and may/ went down to the beach (to play one day)” and have suggested it to youngins who are extended family for when they are assigned to choose, memorize, and recite a poem. I’ve always loved the uplift of his poem “inJust-” about “the little lame balloonman” and springtime “when the world is puddle-wonderful,” and his love poem “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in.”

I use one of my favorite Cummings poems in some context each spring. It’s a prayer as much as a poem. I used it a few times this week when meeting with people in spiritual direction. A directee who is a chorister told me she has sung Cummings’ poem and I was delighted to be introduced to this beautiful interpretation.

i thank You God for most

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

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing-—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

E.E. Cummings

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