E.E. Cummings*

E.E. Cummings (1894—1962) is considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Like my own grandfather, he served in the ambulance corps during WWI. His first collection Tulips and Chimneys appeared in 1923. James Dickey once wrote, "I think that Cummings is a daringly original poet, with more vitality and more sheer, uncompromising talent than any other living American writer."

Although Cummings is known particularly for his innovation, and is associated with modernism, his divergences are primarily built upon traditional poetic structures. His variations often consist of using words in unexpected ways — making it seem like he’s used the wrong word or placed it in the wrong part of the sentence. By doing so he elicits sudden stops and reassessments of language and meaning for the reader.

Rushworth M. Kidder wrote in The Christian Science Monitor:
----“His poetry, in many ways, is the chart of his search for a
----redeemer — for something that would save a world made ugly
----by the two world wars through which he lived, and made sordid
----by the materialism that spawned them. In his early years he
----sought salvation in love poetry. As he progressed he came to
----seek it more and more in a sense of deity, in a supreme source
----of goodness that appears in his poetry as everything from a
----vague notion of nature's beneficence to a vision of something
----very like the Christian's God.”

The following poem — which first appeared in The Atlantic in December 1956 — is clearly a sonnet, although it uses minimal rhyme.

Christmas Poem

from spiraling ecstatically this
proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe: around him, eyes
— gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease—
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole
perhapsless mystery of paradise)
mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile—
— whose only secret all creation sings

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about E.E. Cummings: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Nicholas Samaras

Nicholas Samaras is the 1991 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his debut collection Hands of the Saddlemaker. In the forward to that book, James Dickey calls him “an early master of strange, honest and astonishing metaphor...”

Samaras is the son of a prominent Greek Orthodox theologian, Bishop Kallistos Samaras. He has a dual European—American heritage, and has spent much time on both continents — including having lived on the Greek isle of Patmos where John the Revelator (that is John the Apostle) received his vision. He has said, “A part of what I do is theological. God lives in the point of my pen. In writing, I interact with the act of creativity, the act of creation.” His poems have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Poetry and Image. He has recently completed a collection of 150 poems inspired by the Psalms.

Easter in the Cancer Ward

Because it has been years since my hands
have dyed an egg or I’ve remembered
my father with color in his beard,
because my fingers have forgotten
the feel of wax melting on my skin,
the heat of paraffin warping air,
because I prefer to view death politely from afar,
I agree to visit the children’s cancer ward.

In her ballet-like butterfly slippers, Elaine pad-pads
down the carpeted hall. I bring the bright bags,
press down packets of powdered dye, repress my slight unease.
She sweeps her hair from her volunteer’s badge, leaves
behind her own residents’ ward for a few hours’ release.
The new wing’s doors glide open onto great light. Everything is
vibrant and clattered with color. Racing
up, children converge, their green voices rising.

What does one do with the embarrassment of staring
at sickness? Suddenly, I don’t know where to place
my hands. Children with radiant faces
reach out thinly, clamor for the expected bags, lead
us to the Nurses’ kitchen. Elaine introduces me and reads
out a litany of names. Some of the youngest wear
old expressions. The bald little boy loves Elaine’s long mane of hair
and holds the healthy thickness to his face, hearing

her laugh as she pulls him close. “I’m dying,”
he says, and Elaine tells him she is, too: too
much iron silting her veins. I can never accept that truth
yet, in five months, she’ll slip away in a September
night – leaving her parents and me to bow our heads, bury her
in a white wedding gown, our people’s custom.
But right now, I don’t know this. Right now, we are young,
still immortal, and the kids fidget, crying

out for their eggs. Elaine divides them into teams;
I lay out the tools for the operation.
I tell them all how painting Easter eggs used to be done
in the Old Country. Before easy dyes were common,
villagers boiled onion peels, ladled eggs
into pots so the shells wouldn’t break.
They’d scoop them out, flushed a brownish-
red, and the elders would polish and polish

them with olive oil, singing hymns for the Holy Thursday hours.
The children laugh and boo when I try to sing. The boys swirl
speckles of color into hot water, while the girls
time the eggs. When a white-faced boy asks from nowhere
if I believe in Christ and living forever,
I stop stirring the mix, answer,”Yes, I do.” I answer slowly
and when I speak, my own voice deafens me.
The simple truth blooms like these painted flowers

riding up the bright kitchen walls. I come
to belief. I know that much. Still, what a man may
do with belief demands more than what he says.
Now, the hot waters are a stained, rich red. The eggs have
boiled and cooled. To each set of hands, Elaine gives
one towel, three eggs. I pass the pot of melted paraffin,
show these children how to take the eggs and dip them in
and out. While the wax hardens to an opaque film, we hum

Christos Aneste and the room bustles, ajabber
with speech. Holding pins firmly, we scratch out mad
designs where the color will fill. Small, flurried hands
etch and scrim the shells. Everyone’s fingers whorl
and scratch in names, delicate and final.
Edging the hall’s threshold, an April’s allow-
ance of sun filters through tinted windows. Faces furrow
in solemn concentration. Looking to Elaine, my thoughts clamor

for what is redemptive in illness, for having
a Credo to hold these people to me. Etchings
done, everyone immerses the waxy eggs in the pooled
dye. We ooh together when transfigured eggs are spooned
out, wiped and dried on the counters. Soft wax
is peeled gingerly, flecked away; more oohs for the tracks
of limned lines, testimonial names.
We burnish the shells with olive oil for a fine sheen

For a moment, the cultivated, finished eggs hush
the room. Then, every child goes wild in a rush
to compare, they show the nurses, each
other. The bald boy taps my waist, Lined up and speech-
less, they present me with a bright, autographed
egg, communally done. Elaine makes me close my eyes and laughs
when small limbs push at my back to follow
her. They shove my hand in the cool, wet, red dye. The hollow-

eyed girl squeals till tears streak from her laughing.
Another child cries, “You’ll never get it off!”
And today, I don’t want to. Today,
we’ve painted eggs a lively color, not caring
about the body’s cells and the cells’ incarceration.
I lift my arms to embrace Elaine and dab her nose and chin.
And my hands are vivid red. My hands
are bloody with resurrection.

and we are laughing.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Nicholas Samaras: second post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca