e.e.cummings

He's not the most beautiful guy on the planet I agree, but he's certainly one of the best and the most talented poets this world has ever seen. Together with William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Edgar Allen Poe, e.e.cummings belongs to my favourite poets/writers.

I posted a quote of his a few weeks ago (if you remember...). But for today, I decided to pitch on some poems for you, some of my favourite e.e.cummings poems. Should you wonder about the many many brackets, the spelling, the form and format of the poem and the seemingly nonsensical language - this is intended! And this is exactly why his poetry is so amazingly genious.

Sit back and enjoy:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                    i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

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 If freckles were lovely, and day was night,

              And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,

                    Life would be delight,--

                    But things couldn't go right

                    For in such a sad plight

              I wouldn't be I.

              If earth was heaven and now was hence,

              And past was present, and false was true,

                    There might be some sense

                    But I'd be in suspense

                    For on such a pretense

              You wouldn't be you.

              If fear was plucky, and globes were square,

              And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee

                    Things would seem fair,--

                    Yet they'd all despair,

                    For if here was there

              We wouldn't be we. 

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be of love(a little)

More careful

Than of everything

guard her perhaps only

A trifle less

(merely beyond how very)

closely than

Nothing,remember love by frequent

anguish(imagine

Her least never with most

memory)give entirely each

Forever its freedom

(Dare until a flower,

understanding sizelessly sunlight

Open what thousandth why and

discover laughing)

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i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on the earth and i

like you better than everything in the sky

-sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere

with such a silence and such a darkness

noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have

the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such

sunlight as will leap higher than high

through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my

most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

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may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

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you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young, whatever life you wear

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.

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

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.

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

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His poems are so wonderful that some people used his words for their tattoos. A very nice idea compared to all the ugly tattoos that are out there. I could totally imagine a phrase like "be of love(a little) More careful" in a pretty font tattooed across the outer rist of my foot.

xoxo linskaya (totally lost in reverie)