E.E. Cummings Essays (Examples) Essays (Examples)

E.E. Cummings
Cummings

Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings), the renowned American poet, was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is widely recognized for his poetry. His poetic sense is noted "for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to convey a joyful, living awareness of sex and love" ("Cummings, E.E."). Cummings is also known as a talented artist. Several one-man shows have been held for exhibiting the distinguished paintings and drawings of the great poet cum artist.

His Life in a Nutshell

Early Life

Cummings, at one occasion, said "I did not decide to become a poet -- I was always writing poetry" (as qtd in eef 5).

It was his mother, ebecca Cummings, who had encouraged his only son, Estlin, to write start writing poetry from a very early age. He was only three years old when Cummings came out with his first original poem that was:

"Oh my little birdie oh

With…

EE Cummings
The word choice in ee cummings' "god america I" specifically directs the reader to the sarcastic overtones in the poem, in particular his criticism of American patriotism. The reader can understand the poem better when he or she understands that many of the words are intended as sarcasm. This shapes his argument in a more critical light. ritten in 1926, the poem conveyed cynicism at a point in time when America's economy was booming and patriotism was running at a high after the Great ar, but cummings saw that there were still a lot of reasons to make the case that blind patriotism was unwarranted.

In the opening line he states "next of course to god america…," showing two key elements of sarcasm immediately. The "of course" is a flippant reaction to the need to "of course" love god, because that is a given in American society at the time.…

" (p. 169) This shows that Cummings was deeply interested in shaking the foundations of institutionalization. Not every critic loved his work though. There are some who felt that Cummings satire and sex poems are nothing but "bits of sarcasm, fancy invective, and nose-thumbings." (Horton and Mangan, p. 88) While we may not agree with this view, it is true that some of Cummings' poems seem to serve no real purpose at all.
Cummings had a strong penchant for romanticism. He has often written about his pleasure derived from nature, love and sex. Many of his love poems are inspired by his love experiences from his three marriages. For example, his poems:"May my heart always be open to little," "birds who are the secrets of living," "whatever they sing is better than to know" and "and if men should not hear them men are old" explores everything from love to lust…

ee cummings "she being brand new"
At its surface, E.E. Cummings's poem, "she being Brand/-new" appears to be a poem about a man getting to know his way around a brand new car. The unnamed narrator of the poem describes each nuance as he discovers it and allows the reader to understand the complications that arise when adjusting to a new car. Consequently, "she being Brand/-new" is an extended metaphor for a relationship between the narrator and a woman and the adjustments he must make to learn what she enjoys and does not enjoy as the relationships shifts and sex is introduced. Through the use of imagery, Cummings is able to demonstrate how adjusting to a new car is similar to adjusting to a new sexual partner.

At the beginning of the poem, Cummings leaves the poem open to interpretation by stating, "she being Brand-new; and you/know consequently a/little stiff I was…

Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop" by WB Yeats
This is one of the shortest poems by WB Yeats though has a lot of consistency with the other poems that he wrote before and even after this poem. He is known to be preoccupied by the conflicts and the frictions that exist between cultures, religions, races, classes and the several other categorizations that exist among human beings. He has often used the mouthpiece called Jane in many of his poems and Yeats employs the same character here as the persona. The life that one chooses to live is the satisfying life that the person would like to remain in and no one should try to make them forfeit the chosen life as Jane indicates by rejecting the invitation by the bishop to change her life.

Apparently Jane is an old woman who is not very sane but the insanity gives her…

Modernist literature refers to a literary period from the first half of the 20th century, one that reacted to the external influences of an increasingly industrialized society, and one that was becoming more and more globalized. This was a population of people who had been hardened and drained by two world wars. This was a population of people who were pondering the future of humanity, human existence, the human condition and their place in the world. When compared to the romantic period, modernism appears edgier and less serene. The romantic period had more of a focus on the natural world and the experience of being; modernism focused more on the inner self, seeing more of a decline and fraught fragmentation with the external world. From a literary perspective, the period meant a subversion of typical norms: modernist prose and poetry played with structure and form in ways that readers weren’t…

Dylan Thomas

In "Elegy," Dylan Thomas uses the connection of his father being blind, to talk about his father's death. This poem is about Thomas's father's death, but explains how Thomas felt about his father. His father was blind, and Thomas felt that he had to see things for his father. The following quotes explain this: "...broken and blind he died/.../the darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed/.../Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw/Through his unseeing eyes.../.../Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide/.../and old blind man is with me where I go/alking in the meadows of his son's eye." The first line of the quote states he's blind, and through the next few lines of the poem, it keeps hinting about darkness and how Thomas's father was blind. It then starts talking about how Thomas saw through his father's eyes. You see this in the quote…

Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken" (lines 18-20):
In the final lines of this poem, the narrator says some of the most famous lines in American poetry: "I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference" (19-20). Many have interpreted these lines as a celebration of individuality, but on closer inspection, it becomes evident that in reality, the narrator is lamenting that he has made these choices. Instead of following the path of others, he has gone on his own path. His conclusion is that it was this choice, choosing "the path less travelled by" that has marked the rest of his life. The tone of the piece is not one of self-congratulation but rather depression and despondency. He does not say that he regrets the choices that he has made, but acknowledges that his life would be very different had he made other choices.

T.S.…

In the poetic style, I was inspired by ee cummings to use short sentences to convey the man's thought processes in the morning, and also cumming's subject choice, which is usually about loneliness and loss and the inability to express what one is feeling in concrete terms. I tried to break up the poem in significant places, using line breaks to emphasize important words like "left" and "loss" rather than strictly adhering to conventional sentence breaks at the end of complete thoughts.

From Baraka's influence, I was inspired to include a reference to the current political situation in Iraq. I wanted this reference to be realistic -- most of us get our input about politics in snatches, from the television news. I wanted to create a sense of irony too that the soldiers want to communicate and get home, while the man wants to leave his home and get to work…

Human Suffering in the Midst of Progress in the orks of EE Cummings & Mark Rothko
At the turn of the 20th century, American culture has flourished significantly, especially with the emergence of important fields of discipline that evoke individualism and free expression in works of art created by American artists. This phenomenon is especially evident after orld ar II, where the conflict among the world's nations had affected the psyche of American society and nation, one of the major players in the recently concluded war. After II, different lifestyles have emerged in the American society: consumerism, urbanism, and hedonism. These lifestyles gave birth to individualism and freedom of expression among people, especially now that the mass media made it possible for the society to exchange and extend messages and information to people located in different areas. However, despite these developments in American life, people have initially become disillusioned and…

Latashia Weston
Original Work

Poem -- Version 1: "next to of course god america i"

"next to of course god america i" E.E. Cummings

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Short Writing: Paraphrasing a scene from a play

Revised Work

Short Fiction -- John Updike -- "A&P"

Short Writing: Describing a Poem

Short Writing: Paraphrasing a scene from a play

Short Story - Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Short Story - A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Glossary

Parody

Symbolism

Theme

Irony

Alliteration

Postmodern

Motif

Style

Character development

In my literary analysis essays, I have endeavored to discover why I thought an author wrote a particular piece, how they think about their work, and why they made the choices they did with regard to theme, character development, and use of literary devices. I have also attempted to make my own perspective transparent in my writing, and through this effort, understand more about the work of these authors.

Original Work

Poem -- Version 1: "next to of course god america i"

E.E. Cummings's poem…

Twilight" by Louise Gluck and Stephen Crane's "Four Poems" on the Theme of Futility
The poem "Twilight" by Louise Gluck describes a specific moment in time of the subject's life, the only point during his day when he can experience any sense of freedom in his otherwise futile existence. This is highlighted in the first words of the poem "All day he works at his cousin's mill, / so when he gets home at night, he always sits at this one window, / sees one time of day, twilight." During the day he is a prisoner of his office and all he can observe of nature is the window showcasing "a squared-off landscape / representing the world." The word "representing" is significant, given that Gluck is suggesting by implication that the landscape in the window merely represents reality and is not reality itself, It is through this window that the…

Imagist poetry is in many ways the essence of what poetry strives to be -- it is concise, concrete, and creates a visual image through carefully selected language. As a poetic movement, Imagism began around 1912 with poetry by Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle (usually written H.D.), among others, and the movement carried on into the twentieth century to produce some very popular and highly expressive works. The Imagists produced four anthologies of their work -- Des Imagistes, 1914; Some Imagists, 1915, 1916, 1917; and the magazines Poetry (from 1912) and The Egoist (from 1914); and these included the work of a dozen or more Imagist poets. It has been some time since a strong collection of Imagist poetry has been made, and this anthology is intended to present some of the works that help define this poetic movement.
The approach is largely chronological, carrying the reader from early…

Take as an example McDonald's venture to extend its business operations in countries within the Asian region. Through globalization, the company has learned to adapt to the culture of the country it invests in. Examples of such adjustments are the introduction of rice in most of the meal offerings of McDonald's in the Philippines, inclusion of spicy foods in McDonald's menus in India, and the establishment of large McDonald's buildings in China in order to accommodate the large number of consumers that patronize the fast food chain. These are examples of companies' conscious effort to recognize globalization and its principles.

ibliography

Consensus." Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus.

Feminist Utopia." Available at http://www.amazoncastle.com/feminism/ecocult.shtml.

Introduction to globalization." Available at http://www.globalization.com/intro.cfm?page_id=1321.

Positivism." Available at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/mach1.htm.

Postmodernism and its critics." Available at http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm.

Socialization." Available at http://anthro.palomar.edu/social/soc_1.htm.

Too bad I didn't listen to my parents when they said, "Enjoy it now, for you'll never be young again." Or questioned, "Why are you always in such a big hurry to grow up?" Too bad I didn't realize that my older siblings were just as jealous of me having no responsibilities, as I was of them being older. Too bad that I did not have adult eyes in my child's body, so I could have seen all the wonderful things I was missing by dreaming about being older. I would like to see with adult eyes how great those New Year's parties were with my family, as we cuddled close together and watched the movies or television shows, ate popcorn, and drank bubbly non-alcoholic champagne. I would like to see with adult eyes how wonderful it was to go to story hour each week and just sing songs,…

Auden
The Amazing Moderns W.H. Auden (adio Script)

"Jumpstart" radio show theme song playing.

ADIO ANNOUNCE:

Good afternoon girls and boys, guys and gals! This is Boom Bill Bass, a.k.a. Three B, ready to jumpstart your afternoon with my "unofficial" DJ mix and musings about prose and poetry, music and lyrics, and anything in between these things!

Listen up! We will be doing a great series in Jumpstart this month, called the "Amazing Moderns." This is a poetry series -- yes dear listeners, a poetry series this time -- showcasing the works of great poets in American literature in the 20th century. If you're wondering what 20th century means, guys and gals, it's that period when you're not yet born, oh yeah I'm kidding -- NOT! This period is between the 1900s and well before the Millennium, before the futuristic years of "2Ks" -- that's 2000 and up -- started.

So what's up with the 20th…

John Berryman's "Dream Song 14"
Dream Song

This poem, friends, is boring. The entire work seeks to illustrate the idea that "life, friends, is boring." It does so by being itself tremendously boring. Though the author occasionally uses exciting or interesting words and phrases, such as "flash and yearn," he does so only in the pursuit of higher boredom by showing that even these words can be sucked into a context which ultimately yields a wish for death. There is nothing but boredom. In the poem, the narrator subsumes the conventions of interesting poetry and puts on, as it were, the form of a half-decent modern poem. However, he purposefully avoids allowing any of the sublime to slip into his work, thus leaving this form of high poetry dead and boring. By structuring his poem in a modern conventional fashion, maintaining a detached and uninterested tone throughout, and by setting the work…

Internet Has Changed Business
To change is to make different. The Internet has definitely changed the way business is done. Business is no longer a 9 to 5 operation. Blue laws have been virtually erased from the books. Holidays are now optional. Like all change, some aspects of change are better; some aspects are worse. Where will the Internet ultimately lead businesses and society in general? To a whole new world!

Commercial businesses have had new doors open up for them. Small shops, including mom and pop shops, are now able to compete with larger companies. To sell tangible goods, one must have a place from which to vend. Before, everyone needed a storefront. With a storefront came electric bills, phone bills, heat bills, trash bills, water bills plus the rent or mortgage! In addition to those expenses, there was also stock, employees and advertising. The Internet has also opened up…

Timmons (1994) in his study presents a three-dimensional model of practical application of a good idea:
Comprehensive evaluation of the opportunity;

Comprehensive evaluation of one's own expertise and inclination; and Comprehensive evaluation of the resources gathering process to maintain the launch of business venture.

Long and McMullan (1984) propose that application of a good idea depends on two processes; namely, elaboration and evaluation. Singh (1998) found that those entrepreneurs who spend more time studying the pros and cons of an idea before embarking on its application tend to set up fewer businesses than those who spend less time in the elaboration and evaluation phase. However, Singh (1998) points out that higher majority of successful entrepreneurs are those who spend more time in elaboration and evaluation.

1.4 Traits of entrepreneurs

Wright et al. (1997a) studied motivational drivers of entrepreneurs and found that entrepreneurs are primarily driven by either one or both factors. They divided entrepreneurs…

Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas)
The "Poetry Explications" handout from UNC states that a poetry explication is a "relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationship of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem."

The speaker in "Fern Hill" dramatically embraces memories from his childhood days at his uncle's farm, when the world was innocent; the second part brings out the speaker's loss of innocence and transition into manhood. This explication will identify and critique Thomas' tone, imagery (including metaphors) and expressive language (as it contributes to the power of the poem). ("Fern Hill" uses 6 verse paragraphs; there are 9 lines in each paragraph.)

"Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs / About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green / the night above the dingle starry / time let me hail and climb / golden in the heydays…

corpse strangled with the rope still around his neck, the first thing I wanted to do was to remove the rope. Because the look on the dead body's face was horrible, and obviously the rope was what was responsible for the death, and also for the horrible look on the corpse's face, with bulging bloodshot eyes and the tongue sticking out. But Harry went and looked at the body to make sure that he was dead, and then basically Harry told me that this was a crime scene, so we shouldn't disturb any possible evidence. So we didn't take the rope off, and instead we went to talk to the victim's wife. She hadn't moved from the last time we saw her; she was just motionless in her chair. I asked her if she had told anybody about her husband's death, and in a weirdly non-emotional way she said…

Thus, we can see that the perils of man seem meaningless in the overall scheme of the world, "hen the wind stops, and, over the heavens / The clouds go, nevertheless, / In their direction," (Stevens 1923). Nature, and the rest of the world will always go on. Death, as well as life itself then seem meaningless.
Faulkner too paints a much more inglorious image of death, especially death on the proving grounds of battle to protect and serve one's country. In "Two Soldiers," a young rural southern Pete Grier leaves his family in the South to join the war, inspired by the patriotism which swept over much of the country at the time. Even the young eight-year-old narrator can see Pete's noble ignorance, yet is caught up in the image of glory it would bring to him and his family. It is within this fantasy the boy tries to…

The line breaks in this poem are sudden and create a mood of suspense because the reader must move to the next line to read the rest of the story. hen the poet begins counting, we have a sense of something dreadful about to occur. The rhyming in this poem is also effective in that the rhyming words are strong and visual. In the last stanza, the words "luck" (Housman 5) and "struck" (8) are powerful in that we can almost hear the clock tower striking the hour. Unlike the rhyme and rhythm in "e Real Cool," this rhythm is slow and contemplative. The poet wants us to read his slowly so we can identify with the man awaiting his death. Both poems utilize structure to establish a mood and tone that we can relate to the subjects of the poems.
Brooks and Housman illustrate how structure, rhythm, rhyme, and…

hile the poems are no doubt universal, we can see elements of Americana sprinkled throughout them. Cultural issues such as decision-making, the pressure of responsibility and duty, and the complexity of death emerge in many poems, allowing us to see society's influence on the poet. In "The Road Not Taken," we see how life is filled with choices. Because we are American, we are lucky enough to experience freedom but this does not always come without difficulty. ith this poem, the narrator explains how decision-making can be trying because we never actually know how things are going to turn out. Nevertheless, we must make choices and get on with our lives. In "Stopping by oods," the narrator encounters a similar type of conflict in that the pull of our fast-paced American lives makes him or her want to stay in the woods for just a little while to enjoy…

e are consuming too many of our natural resources and our use of fossil fuels threaten the survival of our planet. The developing world seems to placing further strains upon the earth, with no signs of abatement in population growth or industrialization. e are torn apart by nationalism rather than united as a species, in the Middle East, in Africa, and Eastern Europe. e have more material goods, but less spiritual satisfaction.
In answer to all of these questions, we must look to the persona of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, first and foremost, grappled with issues afflicting the region, and the cultures and faiths that are most troubling to the geopolitical crisis of today, namely the tensions between the Muslim and Hindu populations of East Asia. He also provided many solutions to all peoples, not just his own. His philosophy of nonviolence inspired Martin Luther King Jr. He also embraced people…

Mill believed that any act may itself be inherently moral, so long as the outcome of that action produces a benign effect. Mill believed that the most ethical act is that which produces the most good, even if the act itself is one which is traditionally considered evil. An example of utilitarian philosophy would include the killing of innocent animals to determine a cure for some infectious disease. And while there are components of this philosophy that would certainly align with Aristotle's definition of ethics, it seems difficult to picture the latter condoning any method to achieve moral behavior, particularly in regards to the following quotation from Nichomachean Ethics. "A man will not live like that by virtue of his humanness, but by virtue of some divine thing within him. His activity is as superior to the activity of the other virtues as this divine thing is to his…