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.
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