Edward Estlin Cummings - Essay Example

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the merry deer ran before. …my heart fell dead before (Cummings lines 1-5/ 31-35). The last line varies at the end of the poem from “the merry deer ran before” to “my heart fell dead before.” Even with this slight variation, the repeated lines have a magic effect of overturning the theme of the poem from tragic to that of vitality and life. Two most evident details in this repeated verse is the use of colors and numbers for the purpose of description.

The persona is describing the green garb of his lover and the golden color of the horse as well as silver dawn. These details chronicle the beautiful atmosphere of the lovers at the time. There are also numbers, which are repeated throughout the poem. In this specific stanza, the persona talks of “four lean hounds” of deer (Cummings, line 4). The numbers and the colors are a combination of beauty and terror, especially when the carrier resembles the war carriers that take soldiers to war (Bloom 22).

At some point in the end when the lines are repeated, the poem draws the beauty of the described place and the lover by engulfing them in an atmosphere of death. The poem describes from the start a chronological event where it first describes the chase and the death of the persona and the collapse of his lover. These images are alluded to but when the repeated lines appear the poem takes the form of vitality and life. As the two lines unite the poem, the lovers are unified in elation. The colors green is the color of life and connects the lovers who are partakers in the succession of life and fatality.

B: Edward Estlin Cummings. Xaipe/Seventy-one poems The poem selected from this collection is titled “I thank You God for most this amazing.” The poem is like praise lyric made whole by playing with words, grammar, punctuation and syntax (Bloom 28). For example, there is lack of spacing and punctuation, which make the speaker, speak without breathing; thus showing the intensity of his overwhelming joy and appreciation. With only four stanzas, the first stanza captures the spirit of the rest of the piece, and it goes thus: 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 (Cummings, lines 1-4) In this stanza, the speaker describes the day as amazing with the “spirit of trees” and a sky of “blue true dream” with “everything” ordinary and inestimable and “yes.

” By writing continuously without spacing, regardless of the presence of punctuation, the poet renders the speaker breathless. Reading the poem kills it and gives it a new life afterwards when it is reborn as the speaker reunites and communicates with Mother Nature. Like a small child, the speaker describes the new life in terms of his newly founded cognizance because he is reborn. The first stanza is precedence to what has already happened, and the speaker is joyous of the renewed sun, life, love and wings; including the earth itself.

The praise is merely a subjective experience because the speaker renders everything new because of his personal renewal. With rebirth or a new perspective in life, things become new and one is able to picture things from a different point of view. The persona establishes a personal deity, “