I’m glad I started reading e.e. cummings with Collected Poems rather than Complete Poems 1904-1962 because at 1102 pages I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to tackle that big of a volume of poems, even if I had read many of them years before.

However, it didn’t take me long to find

(XIV)

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victum(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if—listen:there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;let’s go

one of my favorite all-time cummings’ poems that I didn’t realize wasn’t in the Collected Poems until i read it here again.

Of course, it’s difficult not to note that it was published in 1944 when cummings was approximately 50, and not nearly as old or as cynical as I am — well, not as old, at least.

On the other hand, I first read this poem at 19 and even then had begun to wonder if “Progress” was the best description of changes manifesting themselves. Perhaps it’s the stoic in me that feels uncomfortable with too much comfort. Of course, I was also moved by Emerson’s “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” so the idea wasn’t completely new to me.

Even though I’ve long been fascinated with electron microscopes, the line “electrons deify one razorblade/ into a mountainrange” struck me as particularly true, for even in the 60’s people seem far too impressed with “the latest thing” no matter what it might be. Unfortunately, that knowledge hasn’t totally immunized me to the appeal of the latest technological toys.

In the end, it’s the contrast between “poor flesh” and “a world of made” that seems most convincing here. Too many people are caught up in their mountains and mountains of things and unconcerned with the welfare of people who have nothing except their lives.

As much as I like E. E. Cummings ( I just read that he preferred that editors and critics capitalize his name), I can sometimes read fifty or more pages in his Complete Poems and not find a single poem that I like. Then, suddenly, there’s two poems within five pages of each other that seem unforgettable, like this poem and yesterday’s “pity this busy monster manunkind:”

XX

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?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
— when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
— whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t; blow death to was)
— all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

It hardly seems that the two poems could have been written by the same author. This poem reminds me of Gerald Manly Hopkins, perhaps even Dylan Thomas, while “pity this busy monster manunkind” seems like it could have been written by a Metaphysical Poet.

I’m not sure that it isn’t mainly the sound of this poem that appeals to me, particularly the opening line, which sounds like it could have come directly from the Wizard of Oz. It doesn’t hurt that the pattern of this first line is repeated in each of the three stanzas.

A lot of online commentators apparently see the poem as a description of the end of the world. And while I can see why they might interpret the poem that way, it seems to me the real emphasis is on the last two lines of each stanza, which offer a remarkably optimistic view, considering the opening lines.

Even if all the promise of summer is a lie, and life consists of being buffeted about by autumn winds, “the single secret will still be man.”

No matter how harsh the winter, those who hearts “are mountains” shall remain to “cry hello to the spring.”

Even in the face of death, “the more we live,” for what else can you do but reaffirm the value of life when confronted by death?

I’ve finished the volume called XAIPE in E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 without finding one poem as good as “pity this busy monster manunkind” or “what if a much of a which of a wind,” but I have found a number I like. Several, like this one, focus on “reason:”

life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
–but beauty is more each than living’s all

multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
canceled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete:pasts are unborn
(here less than nothing’s more than everything)

death,as men call him, ends what they call men
-but beauty is more now than dying’s when

Although he says “reason,” it’s clear that Cummings is talking about “science” and its insistence on sticking to the “facts,” which seems to stand in opposition to art’s emphasis on feelings. While I’d like to think this is a false dichotomy, forced to make this choice I’d choose beauty over reason.

I may read the “meditations of mankind” during the winter, but find it nearly impossible to stay inside reading on a sing day, much less a summer day. Though I’ve devoted much of my life to books, I’ve never read a book that moved me as deeply as a week’s backpack in to a Cascade wilderness.

I’ve been too close to death not to fear its power, but “beauty is more now than dying’s when.” Who thinks of dying when confronted with great beauty?

I’ve finished 73 Poems, apparently the last book of poems published during Cumming’s life. Though for me few of the poems rise to the level of his greatest poems, I marked 7 of the poems as worth re-reading, not an insubstantial number.

Perhaps not surprisingly, several of the poems deal with the subject of death, quite optimistically, I noted. I’m not sure if this poem makes the best argument for that optimism, but it’s one that I’ve considered as possible from time to time, and it does a good job of tying together major themes in his poetry from his earliest, most famous poems to these last, less famous ones:

44

Now i lay(with everywhere around)
me(the great dim deep sound
of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and

what a gently welcoming darkestness–

now i lay me down(in a most steep
more than music)feeling that sunlight is
(life and day are)only loaned:whereas
night is given(night and death and the rain

are given;and given is how beautifully snow)

now i lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine)

something which nobody may keep.
now i lay me down to dream of Spring

I can’t help but think that the opening line was meant to reflect the famous childhood prayer

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

which would certainly reflect Cumming’s early upbringing, and, though his religious beliefs become less clear in his later poetry, his enthusiasm for life, especially for Spring, the symbol of rebirth and new beginnings, never waivers.

I’m not sure why but the whole poem reminds me of Walt Whitman’s line in Song of Myself: “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,/ And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” Certainly the attitude toward death seems equally optimistic.

In the end dreaming of “Spring” brings to mind all of the delightful poems that Cumming’s has written about Spring, and reminds us just how remarkable it is for a modern poet to be so both optimistic and successful.