Reviews of his work
Critics had mixed feelings on E.E. Cumming's work. Unfavorable responses occurred throughout his life as a poet, but most commended Cummings for his purely original style. I agree with the critics who treasure and applaud E.E. Cumming's poetry. There is something weird and ambiguous in each of Cumming's pieces. Some find the unorthodox style frustrating and childish, but i believe it's what makes E.E. Cumming's poetry so memorable. There are so many things behind the superficially confusing muddle of words.
Here are examples of critical responses to this author :
Leah Tieger analyzes in this pretty how town in context to the rest of E.E. Cumming's poems. She feels, like I do, that in the pretty how town shows the core of Cumming's poetry.
Several critics comment that cummings's writings are transcendental in their overarching themes of individuality and spirituality (the very touchstones of transcendental thought). Certainly, "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is no exception. The poem's themes of the passing of time and of mortality mirror the transcendentalist ethos of spirituality. Its focus on the individual (whose significance is as lost to society as it is to death) represents the transcendental disgust for conformist society. Furthermore, the exalted love between Noone and Anyone also reinforces a transcendental philosophy. Love, like the seasons, is a driving force in the poem. Anyone and Noone love each other as they age. Their love is set apart from the ordinary marriages of the other townspeople, who marry as mundanely as they live. Certainly, the love between Anyone and Noone becomes the means through which they are further distinguished as individuals.
should first examine cummings's overall reputation, since his poetry has often been described in absolute positive or negative terms, especially in the first half of his career when he wrote "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond." Cummings's unique structural style and unconventional use of punctuation was disturbing to many of his contemporary critics, and people tended to either love his poetry or hate it. As R. P. Blackmur notes in his influential 1931 article for the Hound & Horn, "Critics have commonly said, when they understood Mr. Cummings' vocabulary at all, that he has enriched the language with a new idiom." At the same time, Blackmur also indicates that the "typographical peculiarities" of Cummings's poetry "have caught and irritated public attention." The negativity aimed toward cummings's poetry can also be seen, indirectly, in the relative lack of formal criticism of the poet, especially during these early decades.
In subsequent decades, as more poets began to employ unconventional forms and techniques, cummings's reputation also improved. As Robert E. Maurer notes in his 1955 article for the Bucknell Review, "It is unfortunate that most of the critical appraisals of Cummings' poetry were made early, shortly after his first books were published." Maurer disputes the idea that cummings did not know poetic rules, and so chose to use gimmicks in his writing. Maurer says, "He is instead a prime example of the old adage that an artist must know all the rules before he can break them." Likewise, in E. E. Cummings: An Introduction to the Poetry (1979), Rushworth M. Kidder notes that "It is important to recognize … that the spatial arrangements of [cummings'] poems are the work neither of a whimsical fancy nor a lust for novelty."
Today, cummings is widely regarded as one of the great twentieth-century poets. In addition, while his poem, "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond," has not been examined in great detail by many critics, the poem has become one of cummings's most well-known poems and has become a favorite with readers.
Several critics comment that cummings's writings are transcendental in their overarching themes of individuality and spirituality (the very touchstones of transcendental thought). Certainly, "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is no exception. The poem's themes of the passing of time and of mortality mirror the transcendentalist ethos of spirituality. Its focus on the individual (whose significance is as lost to society as it is to death) represents the transcendental disgust for conformist society. Furthermore, the exalted love between Noone and Anyone also reinforces a transcendental philosophy. Love, like the seasons, is a driving force in the poem. Anyone and Noone love each other as they age. Their love is set apart from the ordinary marriages of the other townspeople, who marry as mundanely as they live. Certainly, the love between Anyone and Noone becomes the means through which they are further distinguished as individuals.
should first examine cummings's overall reputation, since his poetry has often been described in absolute positive or negative terms, especially in the first half of his career when he wrote "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond." Cummings's unique structural style and unconventional use of punctuation was disturbing to many of his contemporary critics, and people tended to either love his poetry or hate it. As R. P. Blackmur notes in his influential 1931 article for the Hound & Horn, "Critics have commonly said, when they understood Mr. Cummings' vocabulary at all, that he has enriched the language with a new idiom." At the same time, Blackmur also indicates that the "typographical peculiarities" of Cummings's poetry "have caught and irritated public attention." The negativity aimed toward cummings's poetry can also be seen, indirectly, in the relative lack of formal criticism of the poet, especially during these early decades.
In subsequent decades, as more poets began to employ unconventional forms and techniques, cummings's reputation also improved. As Robert E. Maurer notes in his 1955 article for the Bucknell Review, "It is unfortunate that most of the critical appraisals of Cummings' poetry were made early, shortly after his first books were published." Maurer disputes the idea that cummings did not know poetic rules, and so chose to use gimmicks in his writing. Maurer says, "He is instead a prime example of the old adage that an artist must know all the rules before he can break them." Likewise, in E. E. Cummings: An Introduction to the Poetry (1979), Rushworth M. Kidder notes that "It is important to recognize … that the spatial arrangements of [cummings'] poems are the work neither of a whimsical fancy nor a lust for novelty."
Today, cummings is widely regarded as one of the great twentieth-century poets. In addition, while his poem, "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond," has not been examined in great detail by many critics, the poem has become one of cummings's most well-known poems and has become a favorite with readers.
B. J. Hunt describes Cumming's poetry how it truly is. Simple at first, then with underlining messages and themes. i disagree with Hunt, though. in a pretty how town describes not only death, but love and time. To say it is purely about death is like saying a diamond is just clear. There is so much more to cumming's poetry.
E. E. Cummings's "Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town" rolls across the tongue like a preschool song. On one hand, the playful rhythm and sound complement nature's sequences where life cycles rotate throughout the nine stanzas like a merry-go-round, life on a proverbial fast-paced playground. Masked, however, is life's monotony and death's certainty as the four-line stanzas, mostly tetrameters that mirror the four seasons, lead, perhaps, to an immutable certainty: everyone dies.
The poem opens with light, harmonious double dactyls in line 1: "anyone lived in a pretty how town." Playful rhythm continues in subsequent dactyls such as "women and men (both little and small)" (5), "someones married their everyones" (17), and "many bells down" (2, 24) that stream into trochees like "pretty" (1), "summer autumn winter" (3), and iambs like "with up so floating"Page 11 | Top of Article(2, 24). Bells, which often announce important events in small-town communities such as weddings or funerals, seemingly sway in varied meter that carries a carefree rising and falling as if the "many bells" celebrate life or joyfully acknowledge "anyone," a youthful "he" who "sang" and "danced" (4) in the "spring" of life. But "spring," the only monosyllabic foot in line 3, harbors the undertones of isolation and mortality that begin to emerge. By line 24, which repeats line 3, the bells seemingly toll for death, a solitary journey. Stanza 6 further suggests the human winter in "stars" (21) and especially "snow" (22), which often suggest a metaphorical season of death.
Monosyllabic feet such as "sun moon stars rain" (8), also break the easygoing pace to emphasize certain maturity for "anyone" toward the summer ("sun") of life, which occurs without significance to others who "cared not [ … ] at all" (6) as if to focus on human isolation in the midst of humanity. Only the children in the third stanza notice that "anyone" and "noone" (12), the female persona, fall in love. As "someones married their everyones" (17), the poem increasingly hints of monotony and life's insignificance. Interestingly, line 12 contains three feet rather than four. The trimeter reinforces "autumn" (11), often considered the metaphorical golden years of life as time like the line runs short. Line 23 contains two falling dactyls anchored around a rising anapest that gives a seesaw effect reflective, perhaps, of the children's inevitable maturity and constant cycles of birth and death. The line's extra foot creates contrast between "remember" and the fact that everyone "forget[s]" or is forgotten in time. The "snow" (22) suggests unavoidable death, which occurs in stanza seven as seasons continuously churn. As "anyone" and "noone" die, notably, the seasons turn perpetually to "april" (31) or spring, and back to "summer" (34) or "sun" (34) suggestive, perhaps, that in the midst of life death exist—yet, life goes on.
Also, the poem is highly alliterative and euphonic. Assonance dominates with variations on vowel sounds, especially o as in ow, which occurs three times in the first stanza alone: "how town" and "down." The sound is repeated in "down" (10), "now" (13), and "how" (23). Long os flow throughout in words like "so," "floating," "both," "sowed," "noone," "hope," "snow," and "sowing" (1, 5, 7, 12, 19, 22, 24, 22, 35). A sustained ooo courses along in words such as "moon," "few," "grew," and "stooped" (8, 9, 10, 21, 26, 36). The resulting ow-oh-oo seems playful, yet mournful as they drench the poem in a sense of unhindered progression toward sorrow and death. They might be happy ohs or sad oh nos.
Rhymes, internal, end, and slant, hide the immutable force, time that orders human life. "By," "by," and "cried," for instance, seem inconsequential until the reader slows on cacophonous gutturals like ir in "bird" and "stir" in stanza 4, while "grief" or sadness, underscored by "still," imply that by and by grief awaits. "Deep" and "sleep" (29, 30), one of six end rhymes which normally render pleasure, also guide the reader's attention to inescapable death. Some lines end in slant rhymes like "same" "rain" (7, 8), "guess" "face" (25, 26) and accentuate death's poignant certainty by negation of rhythmic harmony.
E. E. Cummings's "Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town" rolls across the tongue like a preschool song. On one hand, the playful rhythm and sound complement nature's sequences where life cycles rotate throughout the nine stanzas like a merry-go-round, life on a proverbial fast-paced playground. Masked, however, is life's monotony and death's certainty as the four-line stanzas, mostly tetrameters that mirror the four seasons, lead, perhaps, to an immutable certainty: everyone dies.
The poem opens with light, harmonious double dactyls in line 1: "anyone lived in a pretty how town." Playful rhythm continues in subsequent dactyls such as "women and men (both little and small)" (5), "someones married their everyones" (17), and "many bells down" (2, 24) that stream into trochees like "pretty" (1), "summer autumn winter" (3), and iambs like "with up so floating"Page 11 | Top of Article(2, 24). Bells, which often announce important events in small-town communities such as weddings or funerals, seemingly sway in varied meter that carries a carefree rising and falling as if the "many bells" celebrate life or joyfully acknowledge "anyone," a youthful "he" who "sang" and "danced" (4) in the "spring" of life. But "spring," the only monosyllabic foot in line 3, harbors the undertones of isolation and mortality that begin to emerge. By line 24, which repeats line 3, the bells seemingly toll for death, a solitary journey. Stanza 6 further suggests the human winter in "stars" (21) and especially "snow" (22), which often suggest a metaphorical season of death.
Monosyllabic feet such as "sun moon stars rain" (8), also break the easygoing pace to emphasize certain maturity for "anyone" toward the summer ("sun") of life, which occurs without significance to others who "cared not [ … ] at all" (6) as if to focus on human isolation in the midst of humanity. Only the children in the third stanza notice that "anyone" and "noone" (12), the female persona, fall in love. As "someones married their everyones" (17), the poem increasingly hints of monotony and life's insignificance. Interestingly, line 12 contains three feet rather than four. The trimeter reinforces "autumn" (11), often considered the metaphorical golden years of life as time like the line runs short. Line 23 contains two falling dactyls anchored around a rising anapest that gives a seesaw effect reflective, perhaps, of the children's inevitable maturity and constant cycles of birth and death. The line's extra foot creates contrast between "remember" and the fact that everyone "forget[s]" or is forgotten in time. The "snow" (22) suggests unavoidable death, which occurs in stanza seven as seasons continuously churn. As "anyone" and "noone" die, notably, the seasons turn perpetually to "april" (31) or spring, and back to "summer" (34) or "sun" (34) suggestive, perhaps, that in the midst of life death exist—yet, life goes on.
Also, the poem is highly alliterative and euphonic. Assonance dominates with variations on vowel sounds, especially o as in ow, which occurs three times in the first stanza alone: "how town" and "down." The sound is repeated in "down" (10), "now" (13), and "how" (23). Long os flow throughout in words like "so," "floating," "both," "sowed," "noone," "hope," "snow," and "sowing" (1, 5, 7, 12, 19, 22, 24, 22, 35). A sustained ooo courses along in words such as "moon," "few," "grew," and "stooped" (8, 9, 10, 21, 26, 36). The resulting ow-oh-oo seems playful, yet mournful as they drench the poem in a sense of unhindered progression toward sorrow and death. They might be happy ohs or sad oh nos.
Rhymes, internal, end, and slant, hide the immutable force, time that orders human life. "By," "by," and "cried," for instance, seem inconsequential until the reader slows on cacophonous gutturals like ir in "bird" and "stir" in stanza 4, while "grief" or sadness, underscored by "still," imply that by and by grief awaits. "Deep" and "sleep" (29, 30), one of six end rhymes which normally render pleasure, also guide the reader's attention to inescapable death. Some lines end in slant rhymes like "same" "rain" (7, 8), "guess" "face" (25, 26) and accentuate death's poignant certainty by negation of rhythmic harmony.
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