“i carry your heart with me…” – a poem of love
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)
- E. E.
Cummings
Our Comments...
This
poem is very different from many others we have read. The first thing we
noticed about it is that the poet, E.E. Cummings, does not use periods, spaces
between punctuation and parentheses, or capital letters. Although he does not
use periods, he uses parentheses and semi colons for a pausing effect. We are
not sure why E.E. Cummings chose to write this poem in this way, but we think
it may be so that the intensity of what he is saying is not broken. After
reading this poem, we wondered if he wrote other poetry in the same fashion,
and we found that he did. We wondered if he liked the aesthetics of all the
letters being equal in size, or if he did not use periods because he wrote with
an organized stream of consciousness. After a little research, we found that he
wrote some poetry in a way to show simplicity and glee. After reading this
poem, that explanation makes sense. It is incredibly interesting how E.E.
Cummings wrote something, and then explained or added to it within the
parentheses. For example, he writes, “i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my
sweet)”. This really shows the warmth and affection that this poem contains.
I like my body when it is with your …
The poet is speaking to his lover yet again, this time
telling her how he loves it when his body is with hers. He thinks it is an
exciting new experience. He wants to
interpret this poem like; the muscles feel better and the nerves are more
alive. He likes his lover's body, the things that it does, how it reacts and
moves. He likes to feel her spine, its bones, and "your" body and
skin's firm- and smoothness (which he wants to kiss again and again and again).
He likes kissing every inch of her body and as he so eloquently puts it, he
likes to "slowly stroke the shocking fuzz of her electric fur" (we
believe that this means her skin and hair; perhaps the fuzzy body hair on your
arms, face, and other various regions of the body--as he alludes to when he
refers to "and what-is-it comes over parting flesh". Finally, he ends
with the enjoyment he feels when looking into his lover's eyes, those "big
love-crumbs" (we just love that terminology--it "cracks me up",
and I have also noticed that Cummings is quite fond of using the word
"crumb" in his poems), and perhaps, he enjoys and gets a thrill out
of that "new" feeling he receives when having (you) "under me
you so quite new"-a wonderful means of switching the structure or syntax
around to make it sound more confusing than it really is.
“Enriching
our English to feed our minds”
