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wow that's art

I agree. I mean, if someone writes a poem like that as a joke, it's one thing. It makes me angry to think that people take E.E. Cummings seriously. He's symbolic of the worst things about poetry, the pretentious self-indulgence.

He's symbolic of the worst things about poetry, the pretentious self-indulgence.
Concurred.

Admittedly however I rather enjoy the Thrice song "A Living Dance Upon Dead Minds" which is based on the e.e. cummings poem of quite the same name.

Beyond that, no love for the man.

You just can't see the forest for the trees.

I am reminded of the Bob Dylan quote--"Don't criticize what you can't understand."

There is more to a forest then a pile of wood.

I am reminded of the Bob Dylan quote--"Don't criticize what you can't understand."

Enlighten us.

maybe i don't understand it and it is brilliant, could you explain the genius of

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ike this, not saying m
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I love the dude but I can totally see why people would hate him.

Its not meant to be accessible or easy to understand. Most of it is meant to be read aloud or experimented with. You can't just read through it and expect to gleam meaning from it, you have to really study the words and develop your own representation as opposed to relying strictly on the one provided by the author.

He breaks words down and rearranges them, and a lot of people aren't comfortable with that, just like people were uncomfortable with the way modern painters disassemble the visual world and reconstruct it in their own way.

It's definitely pretentious and there's certainly an element of "you just don't understand" to it, but its not really necessary to be understood.

My personal favorite:
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

i understand what you're supposed to do with it, it just seems like something any fucking semi-literate college student could do just as well. i know you're not supposed to judge art by how hard it is to do, but i've never been able to appreciate the value of an empty can of pringles upon a pedestal in the MOMA. i see cummings in the same light.

So your argument is E.E. Cummings was a bad artist because of his simplistic approach. He chose a easy but overlooked method to express creativity and for that, he's a talentless hack?

uh i just don't see why he gets so much praise when peter buttfuck could do the exact same thing

Can you show me a poem of yours, in the style of e.e. cummings, that is comparable in quality and style?

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

...

i love cummings. something about his work feels intensely personal to me. if i could express my love for all the beauty i see around me, it would sound like a cummings poem.