Oh, I so very owe a post on the Qingming (Tomb Sweeping) Festival and many thoughts thereon and therefrom sprung, but so much writing for work... and busy-ness... and the usual gripes and excuses for poor reasons for procrastination. So in lieu of that debt (which I still intend to pay), and for your mild entertainment erstwhile, I will share with you this rambling letter that I wrote to my kids a couple months back while on a business trip to China. So it relates to this blog. In a roundabout-ish sort of way. I liked how it turned out anyway, regardless. Here it is:
l(a
Dear Naomi and Townes (and Eli, someday),
This poem above, by e.e. cummings, is my favorite poem in the English language. Everything about it is perfect. I want to tell you why and then find out what you think of it.
So look at the poem, and see if you can figure out what it says without any explanation. Take a few minutes. Go ahead. I’ll wait here until you get back. When you’ve looked at it a bit and think you may have some ideas about what it is telling you, go on ahead to the next page.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
So… what do you think? It’s usually hard to see anything in this poem at first glance, but if you look at it for a while, you will eventually notice that there are parentheses in the poem – like this: () – and that between the parentheses, if you spell out the letters normally left to right instead of top to bottom, you see the phrase “a leaf falls.”
So between the parentheses, “a leaf falls.” And then, usually (sometimes at least) people will think “Oh, that’s cool. It says ‘a leaf falls’ and the letters kind of fall down the page.” And people are right. That is pretty cool. e.e. cummings is famous for being very clever with how he writes things on the page. He plays with words like kids play with toys, constantly breaking them apart and putting them back together and throwing them around in different ways to see them in a different way, and this time, he broke apart the words and used the structure of the poem on the page to reflect, or emphasize, its content. “A leaf falls.” And so the words fall down the page, just like the leaf falls.
That is cool. But cool as it is, that is only the first part of how cool this poem is. Like the tiniest part. Like imagine finding a cool, many-colored rock on the ground and then you bend down to study it a moment and you think oh, that is kind of cool, and then you look up and realize that the many-colored rock is the toenail of a dragon. This is like that.
For example: Do you see what is going on outside the parentheses? Take a look at that for a second. Maybe you already see it… If you remove the parentheses and everything in between them, you get this:
l
one
l
iness
Now let’s put those together, left to right rather than top to bottom, just like we did for “a leaf falls”:
loneliness
So. Loneliness. And inside the word loneliness, a leaf falls. This is where people start to see a picture in their heads. Or at least, I do. I think of myself walking alone on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It’s autumn – late in the autumn, when most of the leaves have already fallen and are lying on the ground and are quietly rustling, and maybe one or two brown, dry leaves remain on a single large tree just ahead of me by the side of the road. It’s chilly, and the sky is gray, and I’m wearing a jacket. And one leaf falls. It flutters down to the ground, and it takes only a second; and for that brief second, I feel lonely. Or at least, I feel the lonelieness of that moment, that leaf. So quickly, and so briefly, that I probably barely even think about it, and have already forgotten it when I take the next step. The moment flutters through and out of my head as quickly as that leaf flutters through the air and onto the ground. A leaf falls, loneliness.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
OK, good enough. But of course, there is more to it than that. Let’s look again at how cummings breaks up the word “loneliness”:
l
one
l
iness
Notice how he has broken up the word into four parts. Each part, all by itself, conveys in some way, the sense of loneliness. One “l” at the beginning, like a single person, single thing, like the number one. Then the word “one.” Then another “l,” then the word fragment “iness,” which when you think about it is kind of like “I-ness” or “Me-ness,” as in, the quality of being “I,” myself, one person. Alone. So the word “loneliness” can be broken up into four parts, each of which is lonely. And you can write them out separately and provide the reader with four separate but related beats (like in music) of loneliness:
l
one
l
iness
I think now we are starting to see that e.e. cummings is not a normal person. Normal people do not see things like this, or if they do they don’t make use of them in so supremely perfect a way. We can be thankful to him.
Now three more points to make.
First, notice how the poem starts with the beginning of the word “loneliness” – that first “l.” Then in the middle of the word loneliness, the leaf falls. It’s like we start saying the word loneliness, and as we say it, the image of the leaf falling flits briefly through our minds, even as the words and the leaf fall down the page. I think this sort of thing happens to us several times a day, maybe several times a minute. In fact, it’s not too much to say that this is what language, itself, is – it is images or things or concepts made into sounds. So you could say that beyond loneliness, beyond the image of the leaf falling, beyond what it says outright, this poem is telling us something about the very nature of languge, and how it works – how language helps us translate what we see and feel and hear, into something that we can communicate, remember, talk about. It’s illustrating what it means to be able to speak, to have language, to be human.
Second, look at the very middle of the poem, the exact center of it:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The exact center of the poem is where the two “l’s” in the word “falls” stand alone on one line. Two, parallel vertical lines standing next to each other. Now, I have a theory about why e.e. cummings did this – I think he did it on purpose. I could be wrong, but I think e.e. cummings is too clever, too amazing a poet, to do something like that by accident. I think that those two lines, standing together in the exact center of the poem, mark the precise moment when the image and the idea fuse into one thing – the moment when “loneliness” and “a leaf falls” become one thing in the reader’s mind, inseparable, forever related, two things but one thing. It’s like when you suddenly understand something for the first time that you never realized before, but is now perfectly and instantly clear. You know that you will never again not know that thing – and there’s a kind of jolt or charge that comes with those moments, those flashes of realization and understanding.
Third, and last. I just want to point out that e.e. cummings does all of this – illustrates an image of a leaf falling, connects it to the concept of loneliness, gives us a perfect, brief illustration of a moment of realization, provides pleasure in the structure of the poem and its shape and in the deconstruction of the words, and how all of that supports his purpose, and somehow comments on the very nature of language and understanding and perception and maybe even of human life itself – and he does all of this using just four words.
Loneliness. A leaf falls.
I don’t think poetry gets any better than this, to tell us so much and so beautifully, with so little. I love Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Homer, and Dylan Thomas, and Yeats and Heaney and a thousand other poets and poems. But e.e. cummings will always be the King of Poetry for me.
And I love you guys very much.
(You too blog readers! All two of you!)
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
s)
one
l
iness
Dear Naomi and Townes (and Eli, someday),
This poem above, by e.e. cummings, is my favorite poem in the English language. Everything about it is perfect. I want to tell you why and then find out what you think of it.
So look at the poem, and see if you can figure out what it says without any explanation. Take a few minutes. Go ahead. I’ll wait here until you get back. When you’ve looked at it a bit and think you may have some ideas about what it is telling you, go on ahead to the next page.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
So… what do you think? It’s usually hard to see anything in this poem at first glance, but if you look at it for a while, you will eventually notice that there are parentheses in the poem – like this: () – and that between the parentheses, if you spell out the letters normally left to right instead of top to bottom, you see the phrase “a leaf falls.”
So between the parentheses, “a leaf falls.” And then, usually (sometimes at least) people will think “Oh, that’s cool. It says ‘a leaf falls’ and the letters kind of fall down the page.” And people are right. That is pretty cool. e.e. cummings is famous for being very clever with how he writes things on the page. He plays with words like kids play with toys, constantly breaking them apart and putting them back together and throwing them around in different ways to see them in a different way, and this time, he broke apart the words and used the structure of the poem on the page to reflect, or emphasize, its content. “A leaf falls.” And so the words fall down the page, just like the leaf falls.
That is cool. But cool as it is, that is only the first part of how cool this poem is. Like the tiniest part. Like imagine finding a cool, many-colored rock on the ground and then you bend down to study it a moment and you think oh, that is kind of cool, and then you look up and realize that the many-colored rock is the toenail of a dragon. This is like that.
For example: Do you see what is going on outside the parentheses? Take a look at that for a second. Maybe you already see it… If you remove the parentheses and everything in between them, you get this:
l
one
l
iness
Now let’s put those together, left to right rather than top to bottom, just like we did for “a leaf falls”:
loneliness
So. Loneliness. And inside the word loneliness, a leaf falls. This is where people start to see a picture in their heads. Or at least, I do. I think of myself walking alone on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It’s autumn – late in the autumn, when most of the leaves have already fallen and are lying on the ground and are quietly rustling, and maybe one or two brown, dry leaves remain on a single large tree just ahead of me by the side of the road. It’s chilly, and the sky is gray, and I’m wearing a jacket. And one leaf falls. It flutters down to the ground, and it takes only a second; and for that brief second, I feel lonely. Or at least, I feel the lonelieness of that moment, that leaf. So quickly, and so briefly, that I probably barely even think about it, and have already forgotten it when I take the next step. The moment flutters through and out of my head as quickly as that leaf flutters through the air and onto the ground. A leaf falls, loneliness.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
OK, good enough. But of course, there is more to it than that. Let’s look again at how cummings breaks up the word “loneliness”:
l
one
l
iness
Notice how he has broken up the word into four parts. Each part, all by itself, conveys in some way, the sense of loneliness. One “l” at the beginning, like a single person, single thing, like the number one. Then the word “one.” Then another “l,” then the word fragment “iness,” which when you think about it is kind of like “I-ness” or “Me-ness,” as in, the quality of being “I,” myself, one person. Alone. So the word “loneliness” can be broken up into four parts, each of which is lonely. And you can write them out separately and provide the reader with four separate but related beats (like in music) of loneliness:
l
one
l
iness
I think now we are starting to see that e.e. cummings is not a normal person. Normal people do not see things like this, or if they do they don’t make use of them in so supremely perfect a way. We can be thankful to him.
Now three more points to make.
First, notice how the poem starts with the beginning of the word “loneliness” – that first “l.” Then in the middle of the word loneliness, the leaf falls. It’s like we start saying the word loneliness, and as we say it, the image of the leaf falling flits briefly through our minds, even as the words and the leaf fall down the page. I think this sort of thing happens to us several times a day, maybe several times a minute. In fact, it’s not too much to say that this is what language, itself, is – it is images or things or concepts made into sounds. So you could say that beyond loneliness, beyond the image of the leaf falling, beyond what it says outright, this poem is telling us something about the very nature of languge, and how it works – how language helps us translate what we see and feel and hear, into something that we can communicate, remember, talk about. It’s illustrating what it means to be able to speak, to have language, to be human.
Second, look at the very middle of the poem, the exact center of it:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The exact center of the poem is where the two “l’s” in the word “falls” stand alone on one line. Two, parallel vertical lines standing next to each other. Now, I have a theory about why e.e. cummings did this – I think he did it on purpose. I could be wrong, but I think e.e. cummings is too clever, too amazing a poet, to do something like that by accident. I think that those two lines, standing together in the exact center of the poem, mark the precise moment when the image and the idea fuse into one thing – the moment when “loneliness” and “a leaf falls” become one thing in the reader’s mind, inseparable, forever related, two things but one thing. It’s like when you suddenly understand something for the first time that you never realized before, but is now perfectly and instantly clear. You know that you will never again not know that thing – and there’s a kind of jolt or charge that comes with those moments, those flashes of realization and understanding.
Third, and last. I just want to point out that e.e. cummings does all of this – illustrates an image of a leaf falling, connects it to the concept of loneliness, gives us a perfect, brief illustration of a moment of realization, provides pleasure in the structure of the poem and its shape and in the deconstruction of the words, and how all of that supports his purpose, and somehow comments on the very nature of language and understanding and perception and maybe even of human life itself – and he does all of this using just four words.
Loneliness. A leaf falls.
I don’t think poetry gets any better than this, to tell us so much and so beautifully, with so little. I love Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Homer, and Dylan Thomas, and Yeats and Heaney and a thousand other poets and poems. But e.e. cummings will always be the King of Poetry for me.
And I love you guys very much.
(You too blog readers! All two of you!)
I read it, from top to bottom, and I'm glad I did!
ReplyDeleteI love e.e. cummings. one of my favorite poets too. he paints the words on the page and plays with them.
ReplyDeletethe poem sort of says to me that we are not alone. within loneliness, a leaf falls. something else has happened. maybe that's what the ll together is about, too.
the beauty of poetry is the multi-layers of meanings.
I love seeing the words fall together as I read the poem. it looks like a leaf falling.
Very profound, Mr. DeGroot.
ReplyDeletewhat a great essay--could be an intro to in an intro to poetry book. (well explained, not condescending)
ReplyDelete