E. E. Cummings A New System of
E. E. Cummings A New System of Writing PoetryE. E. Cummings created a new system of writing poetry. It is difficult to analyze his style, for he consistently looked for ways to change the meaning of his expression and was known to break the defined rules of grammar. Cummings not only shaped poetry with his emotional vision of words but he also brought a sort of vision to his works with dimensional poetry art. He looked for different ways to be unconventional by experimenting with punctuation, unusual typography, compressed words, dislocated syntax and capitalization in order to capture his state of mind at that particular moment (Schafer; Sauvey). In the poem "since feeling is first", Cummings placed his primary emphasis on feeling rather than thinking and he treated beauty as a dependent on the feelings of the viewer or reader at that time. His state of mind was of experiencing love and life being more importance than rationalizing it. The emphasis is placed on feelings rather than thinking and he compares love to wisdom, stating knowledge is not as important as love. He uses an open form with the use of grammar and capitalizing certain words to create or stress the meaning of a word. For example, throughout
3. Saiveu, Jennifer. Creating Poetry:The Art of e.e.cummings. MU Ohio. Cummings used open form, irony, tone, figures of speech, and symbols to add meaning to his poetry. Even though Cummings was unconventional, his poems had meaning and style that stated the obvious. Sometimes the obvious escapes our thoughts, and must be stated in new style to become important again Cummings was able to master his poetry style of a new symbol system for poetry, where the reader must find and interpret the words, phrases, and sentences before he or she can make sense of the poem. The meaning had to be analyzed not just by the words on the paper, but by where or how they were placed on the paper. the poem, only three words are capitalized and he lower cased the pronoun "I". The first word he capitalized was in the second stanza "while Spring is in the world". I believe he wanted to emphasize spring and give it a new meaning. Spring is a mammoth experience, which overshadows everything else in the world when it happens. In the third stanza, fourth line, he capitalizes "lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry" this sentence has a few important firsts. He uses the lower case "i" and he uses a period after flowers.
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Schafer Sauvey, E Cummings, Empire Zine, Imelda Nancy, MU Ohio, Bedford/St Martin's, e cummings, PoetryThe Art, 20 nov 01, system writing poetry, saying life, love life, defined rules, nov 01, 20 nov, throughout poem, beginning middle, system writing, writing poetry,
Approximate Word count = 825
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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