i thank You God for most this amazing by e e cummings

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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18 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Two years ago, I wrote this. I liked the beginning of the essay, I loved the title… but I had no idea how to finish it. After two years of thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that I needed to display a lot more gratitude.

    Thanks. To all of you and everyone and everything, I suppose.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chris says:

      Reading e e cummings in your 20s and reading him in your 40s are completely different experiences.Report

      • Chris in reply to Jaybird says:

        Definitely. Someone (I don’t remember who) bought me his complete works when I was in my teens, and I loved it, but mostly because it was so different. It wasn’t until I started going through it again about 15 years later that I realized it was actually really good.Report

  2. James Hanley says:

    My favorite poet.Report

    • Boegiboe in reply to James Hanley says:

      Mine, too. Jason read “love’s function is to fabricate unknownness” from my book at our wedding.Report

    • Chris in reply to James Hanley says:

      I’m not sure he’s my favorite, but he’s definitely one of my favorites. There is no cummings without Whitman, and it’s hard for me to read Whitman and not think, “Damn, this is pretty much as good as free verse can possibly be.”

      Cummings, when he’s at his most whimsical, playing with indentation and punctuation, having an entire line that is just an end parentheses, is pretty damn fun though.Report

  3. Rufus F. says:

    I’m not sure I’ve ever read him. In one of those bizarre ironies, I was just reading about him yesterday for my book project and then read this. Clearly means I should read him.Report

  4. Doctor Jay says:

    anyone lived in a pretty how town
    with up so many floating bells down

    I loved that.Report

  5. Burt Likko says:

    Am I the only one who finds the picture of the tombstone ironic?Report

  6. Zane says:

    I’ve always liked e e cummings and Emily Dickinson, I respect Whitman, and I was amazed by Ginsberg’s “Howl” when I first read it in my late 30s.

    But I’ve never enjoyed poetry beyond those poets. I don’t know why. They’re all Americans, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it–different styles? There are plenty of American poets who leave me cold, though.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Zane says:

      I’m sure that there are at least three of us who have started a “howl for ordinary gentlemen” in a text file that now sits abandoned waiting for us to get drunk enough to try again.

      “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by libertarianism”Report