Cummings Poem

[L E Bryan]

Yes!

Trying to reconstruct the poem from bits and pieces of my organic RAM, I only recalled the use of the lower case “L” as a one in loneliness. Now the falling leaf comes back to me. On my default font, “1" and “l” are distinguishable. I suppose spelling the “one” horizontally makes the “one-ly-ness” more obvious, but e.e. was never much for making his poetry obvious.

I was never “into” poetry until one evening sitting in a coffee house close to the university with a bunch of fellow mathematic graduate students, one of them, in a pause of a discussion of R. L. Moore’s arc theorem which we all needed to prove to earn an “A” in topology, declaimed in a loud voice, “What if a much of a which of a wind gives the truth to summer’s lie; bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun and yanks immortal stars awry.”

“HUH?”

So began my interest, strictly as a voyeur, in poetry.

Lawrence


>  On Nov 3, 2017, at 5:03 AM, Robert Z <bertisfine at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It seems you may be thinking of this poem:
> 
> l(a
> 
> le
> af
> fa
> 
> ll
> 
> s)
> one
> l
> 
> iness
> 
> ...which opens his penultimate book, “95 Poems.”
> 
> ~r
> 
> On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 10:12 PM L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net <mailto:lebryan at sonic.net>> wrote:
> I have a ”complete” edition from maybe 40 years ago, but found a poem of his not in it. 
> 
>       l
>      o
>      n
>      e
>      l
> iness
> 
> I can’t recall where I found that. A clear artifact of old typewriters with no separate key for the numeral 1.
>  
> 
>> On Nov 2, 2017, at 6:31 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com <mailto:kbob42 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Recently, I bought a new edition of his complete poems. Great stuff!
>> 
>> On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 9:03 PM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com <mailto:laurakelber at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> "A salesman is an it that stinks Excuse" is one of my favorites.
>> 
>> On Nov 2, 2017 3:05 PM, "L E Bryan" <lebryan at sonic.net <mailto:lebryan at sonic.net>> wrote:
>> One of my favorite poets. Those damned up-floating bells get me all the time.
>> 
>>> On Nov 2, 2017, at 1:52 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> if i 
>>> 
>>> or anybody don't 
>>> know where it her his 
>>> 
>>> my next meal's coming from 
>>> i say to hell with that 
>>> that doesn't matter (and if 
>>> 
>>> he she it or everybody gets a 
>>> bellyful without 
>>> lifting my finger i say to hell 
>>> with that i 
>>> 
>>> say that doesn't matter) but 
>>> if somebody 
>>> or you are beautiful or 
>>> deep or generous what 
>>> i say is 
>>> 
>>> whistle that 
>>> sing that yell that spell 
>>> that out big (bigger than cosmic 
>>> rays war earthquakes famine or the ex 
>>> 
>>> prince of whoses diving into 
>>> a whatses to rescue miss nobody's 
>>> probably handbag) because i say that's not 
>>> 
>>> swell (get me) babe not (understand me) lousy 
>>> kid that's something else my sweet (i feel that's 
>>> 
>>> true) 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> (E. E. Cummings: 100 Selected Poems, # 52)
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com/>
>> 
> 

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