hummingwolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hummingwolf) wrote2002-10-16 09:27 pm
hummingwolf) wrote2002-10-16 09:27 pm
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"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"
While looking in the file cabinet for something else, I found a one-page paper I wrote for an intro to poetry class in September 1988. The poem the professor got me to analyze that week was this one, by e.e. cummings.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Since some people out there in LJ-land have been discussing literary criticism & analysis lately, I figured I'd post a link to some discussion of this poem. Unfortunately, while this site on teaching poetry as a foreign language looks like it could be interesting, I can't guarantee it because it's loading very slowly tonight and I'm too tired to be patient. If any of you are morbidly curious and want to read what I wrote back in college, here it is.
In the poem "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond", E.E. Cummings expresses a desire to be in a different world alone with the one he speaks to, whether this is a lover or a child is unclear. This other world, "gladly beyond/ any experience", is ruled by fragility and silence. While even in this world, things such as snow have power enough to close flowers, the poet says that there the "slightest look easily will unclose" him.
In the other world, "nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals/ the power of your intense fragility." E.E. Cummings still attempts to show how much little things such as a look or a wish affect him. He compares the listener to spring and to snow, which have the power to bring a rose to life or to kill it as the listener has power over him. Everything about the person is described in terms such as "frail" and "small", but it seems that the more fragile things are, the more powerful they are. For instance, the fragility is intense, and "the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses." He speaks of being closed and opened, but it is always done "too easily" or "very beautifully." The person he speaks to has hands smaller than the rain. If fragile things have such importance, those hands must be even more capable of nourishing new life than the rain is.
The power of frailty is expressed in other ways as well, such as the use of small letters throughout. The only capital letter is in the word "Spring", the time of growth for new, fragile things and therefore a time of supreme importance. It is also conveyed in the length of the lines, the shortest line being one where he has closed himself and the following line (line 7) is longest, where he is opened again "as Spring opens...." Also, in the last stanza there is rhyme, subtly emphasizing the message of what power the person has over him and what small hands they have.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Since some people out there in LJ-land have been discussing literary criticism & analysis lately, I figured I'd post a link to some discussion of this poem. Unfortunately, while this site on teaching poetry as a foreign language looks like it could be interesting, I can't guarantee it because it's loading very slowly tonight and I'm too tired to be patient. If any of you are morbidly curious and want to read what I wrote back in college, here it is.
In the poem "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond", E.E. Cummings expresses a desire to be in a different world alone with the one he speaks to, whether this is a lover or a child is unclear. This other world, "gladly beyond/ any experience", is ruled by fragility and silence. While even in this world, things such as snow have power enough to close flowers, the poet says that there the "slightest look easily will unclose" him.
In the other world, "nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals/ the power of your intense fragility." E.E. Cummings still attempts to show how much little things such as a look or a wish affect him. He compares the listener to spring and to snow, which have the power to bring a rose to life or to kill it as the listener has power over him. Everything about the person is described in terms such as "frail" and "small", but it seems that the more fragile things are, the more powerful they are. For instance, the fragility is intense, and "the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses." He speaks of being closed and opened, but it is always done "too easily" or "very beautifully." The person he speaks to has hands smaller than the rain. If fragile things have such importance, those hands must be even more capable of nourishing new life than the rain is.
The power of frailty is expressed in other ways as well, such as the use of small letters throughout. The only capital letter is in the word "Spring", the time of growth for new, fragile things and therefore a time of supreme importance. It is also conveyed in the length of the lines, the shortest line being one where he has closed himself and the following line (line 7) is longest, where he is opened again "as Spring opens...." Also, in the last stanza there is rhyme, subtly emphasizing the message of what power the person has over him and what small hands they have.
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Me too. Analyzing poems each week for that class gave me no end of trouble. Fortunately, the professor didn't ask us to write a paper on what the poem means, but simply to pick some aspect of the poem and write on it. Usually I ended up grasping at straws, which was okay as long as the professor never noticed. :-) (This paper she gave an A, though she picked away at a few things I'd said.)
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in fact, when i got married, i was uncertain as to whether or not i would take my husband's last name - catania - as my own, until i realized that my initials would go from e.e.s to e.e.c.
weird. i know.
:)
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OK now my brain hurts
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another fave of mine is t.s.eliot, four quartets...
ah where would i be without brilliant poets to help me know others see the world as i do, and to allow me glimpses into such word-woven worlds of inexpressible individual snapshots of internally-processed views we might all could have seen.... nothing transports me like a brilliant poem...
i live for the arts!! or maybe i live because of the arts... :)
looking forward to reading the rest of the links later... :)
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