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Tag: e. e. cummings

May 31, 2010

“Once and Upon” – Madeline Gleason

having got up on the wrong side of my Monday morning, I wasn’t to be moved by even poetry, but like a morning prayer I began to read this one, as I do one, even two, even many, every morning
 
I was enchanted, I hope you are too 
 
 
Richard 
 
psst: compare e.e. cummings for childlike innocence and fancy, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” for instance
           
  
                          ___________________

                                                                                                                                                                                  

Once and Upon

                                                                                                                                                                             Cross at the morning
and at waking,
with a mourning for summer,
she crossed the bridge Now
over the river Gone
toward the place called New
to begin her Once Upon.

Once and Upon
my daddy long legs
walked in a web of work
for my sisters and me,
as Mother spun round
with silver knives and forks
in a shining of pans,
a wash of Mondays
and plans
for our lives ten thousand weeks.

To cross the bridge Now
over the river Gone
toward the place called New
to begin her Once Upon,
in a mourning for summer, she moved
to write her right becoming
and find her true beloved.

Snippets and tags of Gone,
criss-crossed as retold,
beggared the strumming
of fresh rhythms
that should have stirred her becoming.

Once and Upon
she ate the plum
and from a full mouth
disgorged the pit
into her hand
while Mother spun as she canned
peach and plum in season –
the land, holy Mother to
the plentiful fruit.

To cross.
But where should her steps lead
away from the river?

Through a desert she hurried,
thirsting she ran
to reach becoming,
passed three water holes
but never saw them,
so eager was she to reach
outward evidence
of her inward drawing.

Sisters of grace,
comely, sea-washed,
with blond shell hair and skin,
whirling with intermittent passion
amidst daddy long legs
and Mother awash
among the underthings,
boys shouting and running,
swaggering and dying
for the sisters’ charms.
AMEN!

Tops a-spin in a dying dance.
Yoo Hoo, Fatty! Buck!
Hi, Pete! Hello, old Gene!

Cross at the morning,
summer crossed with the beginning
of gold,
a sea of brown leaves swirling.

And no trees bent down
to whisper their wisdom
for her becoming.
Ah! Now! Ah! Gone! Ah! New
Ah! Once Upon!  

                     

                         Madeline Gleason 

              

                     

                  

             ___________________________

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April 4, 2008

1, e. e. cummings

among poets one of my favourites is e. e. cummings, who famously eschewed – gesundheit – capitals, even in the spelling of his own name

for years for my own reasons I did the same, I felt that capitals usurped a power, an authority, they too often could not justify, I was left with “God” and “I” as worthy and warranted entities, often even “God” wouldn’t cut it, and was relegated to the more pedestrian lower case “god”, which led of course to “gods”, and incidentally to a more luxuriant and panoplied pantheon, a heaven richer in colour and idiosyncracies than our own culture’s usual abnegations

this process had me probing each item’s validity in order to make some sense of my too fleeting world

there are still not many capitals in my compositions
 

e. e. cummings does many more things with language than I do, but I cannot tell you where any of his impulses come from, I am left with only his poems

but a poem should need nothing else

most of his poems for me don’t, in order to enchant
                                                                                                                                                                      here’s something I came upon serendipitously as I waited on a friend in a bookstore, I thought I’d pass the few minutes I had to wait browsing through books of poems, one takes just that much time to savour a poem, not much more usually than a glass of wine, sometimes they’re even memorable

this poem is taken from a chapter entitled “Erotic Poetry” in a collection edited by Richard Kostelanetz called “AnOther”

which I  bought

it is the first poem in that section, and titled merely “1”

                                                                                                                                                                         1
                                                                                                                                                                        out of bigg

est the knownun
barn
‘s
on tiptoe darkne

ss

boyandgirl
come
into a s
unwor

ld 2 to

be blessed by
floating
are
shadows of ove

r us-you-me a

n
g
el
l

s
 

e. e. cummings  (1894-1962)

                                                                                                                                                                     

this kind of thing has a precedent of course in the work of James Joyce (1882-1941), his “Finnegan’s Wake” goes on for several hundred pages in this manner, and left me for one in the dust

in music Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) was also deconstructing his medium, breaking down musical notation into seemingly random organizations of sound, atonality eschewed – gesundheit – most all of the rules of earlier composition, presciently making way however for everything from the shrieking guitar
meanderings of Jimi Hendrix to the vocal pyrotechnics and eccentricities of Prince through the clanging and oracular pronouncements of Pink Floyd

neither Joyce nor Schönberg can be easily dismissed

nor e. e. cummings
 

all the very best

richibi

  

   __________________________________

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