Poet E. E. Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1894). He was a man who wrote joyful, almost childlike poems about the beauty of nature and love, even though he was actually a conservative, irritable man who hated noisy modern inventions like vacuum cleaners and radios. He spent most of his life unhappy, struggling to pay the bills, ostracized for his unpopular political views.
He had published several books of poetry, including Tulips and Chimneys (1923), when he traveled to Russia in 1931, hoping to write about the superior society under the rule of communism. He was horrified at what he found. He saw no lovers, no one laughing, no one enjoying themselves. The theaters and museums were full of propaganda, and the people were scared to talk to each other in the street. Everyone was miserable.
When he got home, he wrote about the experience, comparing Russia to Dante's Inferno. Most of the publishers at the time were communists themselves, and they turned their backs on Cummings for criticizing communist Russia. Many magazines refused to publish his poetry or review his books. But the attacks only made him more stubborn. He said, "To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
He tried to write a script for a ballet, but it was never performed. He tried writing for the movies in Hollywood, but found that he spent all his time painting humming birds and sunsets instead of working on screenplays. He had to borrow money from his parents and his friends. He said, "I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." A few years later, he decided to make some extra money by giving a series of lectures at Harvard University. Most lecturers spoke from behind a lectern, but he sat on the stage, read his poetry aloud, and talked about what it meant to him.
The faculty members were embarrassed by his earnestness, but the undergraduates adored him and came to his lectures in droves. Even though he suffered from terrible back pains, and had to wear a metal brace that he called an "iron maiden," he began traveling and giving readings at universities across the country. By the end of the 1950s he had become the most popular poet in America. He loved performing and loved the applause, and the last few years of his life were the happiest. He died on September 2, 1962.
In the first edition of his Collected Poems, he wrote in the preface, "The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for most people—it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. ... You and I are human beings; most people are snobs."
“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
______________
o by the by
has anybody seen
little you-i
who stood on a green
hill and threw
his wish at blue
with a swoop and a dart
out flew his wish
(it dived like a fish
but it climbed like a dream)
throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame
blue took it my
far beyond far
and high beyond high
bluer took it your
but bluest took it our
away beyond where
what a wonderful thing
is the end of a string
(murmurs little you-i
as the hill becomes nil)
and will somebody tell
me why people let go
______________
*A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
*America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
*At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
*Be of love a little more careful than of anything.
*Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.
*I imagine that yes is the only living thing.
*I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
*I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
*I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
*If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.
*It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
*Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
*Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
*Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.
*Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
*Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
*The earth laughs in flowers.
*The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
*The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.
*To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
*To destroy is always the first step in any creation.
*To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.
*Unbeing dead isn't being alive.
*Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment