Oh L'Amour + Nature = E. E. Cummings

FYI - The former of my blog title does not mean the song Oh L'Amour by Erasure. 

I honestly think I am sometimes alone in things I find amusing such as cheesy songs/videos like this. Also, thong alert on guy at 1:23 for your viewing pleasure.

Anyway...

Its 2:15 AM and my ode to my missing basic black cami got me into the poem mood. Since I am taking a break from writing my paper, what better way to take another mental break, but to have my mind drift off into something completely unrelated to what I need to write about?

When I wrote the ode, I was thinking about Pablo Neruda's collection which subsequently triggered my thoughts on another favorite of mine, E. E. Cummings. He sparked my interest in my English classes many, many years back because of his unconventional take on poetry writing. It was part avant-garde style with free verse yet traditional in that he wrote sonnets. Often, words and punctuation marks were randomly arranged in the poem making no sense until at the very end depending on the reader's interpretation. When I think of E. E. Cummings, one particular poem of his always comes to mind:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, 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 will easily 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 color 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

A few years after learning about E. E. Cummings, I started getting into Woody Allen films and one film, 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (1986) has a lovely scene about this particular poem. It's a great movie and very enjoyable especially the way the poem - complimented by the soundtrack (that I proudly treasure and own on LP!) - is played out in the film. Well, that is, if you are into Woody Allen movies. The opening song is I've Heard That Song Before by Harry James in the video clip. The piano instrumental in the bookstore and towards the end is Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered by Lloyd N. 

Back to my paper... yawn...