somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond e.e.cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond e.e.cummings

Questions Find all the words related to touch. Find all the words related to nature. What do you notice about the punctuation? What could this mean? Find all the references to eyes. What do eyes symbolise in literature? Find the extended metaphor. What two things are compared? Find the enjambment. What is its effect? Find the repeated words.

The Poet E E Cummings was born in 1894, in Massachusetts, in the United States of America. He served as an ambulance driver in World War I, and was detained in France for several months. After the war he lived in France, studying art, and finally settled in New York. Cummings was one of the most experimental poets of the twentieth century, and the style of his poetry is unusual: he uses distorted syntax, unusual punctuation, new words and slang words. These elements make his poems look complicated, but the ideas contain in them are generally quiet simple.

E. E. Cummings married three times. His first marriage to Elaine Orr (who left her husband for him) lasted only 6 months. His second marriage, to Ann Barton was a stormy, passionate one lasting only a few years. He at last met Marion Morehouse, an actress, model, and photographer, whom he married and lived with for the remaining 30 years of his life. Compiled by L van Jaarsveld

Stanza 1:1-2 somewhere i have never, gladly, :

Stanza 1:3 Small/ soft/ kind gestures (movements) Overtakes/ overpowers him in your most are things which me,

Stanza 1:4 or Paradox- How can something be all around you and enclose you yet you cannot touch it? Speaks to the mysterious, unknowable power of love. Although these powerful emotions surround him, he cannot touch them because they are so all-consuming that they have become a deeply ingrained part of him. This is a picture of how intense these emotions are.

Stanza 2:1 unclosed connected with enclose. This is cummings own made up word. The speaker has gone from being totally surrounded to totally opened up. your slightest look easily will me

Stanza 2:2 Implies emotionally cut off though i have myself as,

Stanza 2:3-4 What is the image here? Given a capital letter= Personification. Spring is a person opening up the roses. She is like a goddess who wields this power over him as spring has over nature. you always myself as opens ( skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose

The piece is similar to many traditional love poems in that the speaker spends a lot of time talking about his lover's eyes, and in that the poem uses the well-worn symbol of a rose but with a difference.

A note on roses In the 1930 s society was still very maledominated, so the speaker could be using this gender switch to really emphasises the power his lover has over him What makes this guy a bit different from the stereotypical males of his time is that the power she had over him only seems to make him lover her more.

Stanza 3:1-2 or if your be to, i and my life will,,

Stanza 3:3-4 Personification= The rose comes to the end of its seasonal life in autumn. This rose is imagining the snow will be falling soon, a sign of the flower s impending and unavoidable death in winter. But this is not tragic because the life cycle of the rose is eternal, the flower will rebirth again in spring. as when the of the carefully everywhere descending;

Stanza 4:1-2 nothing which we are to perceive in this the power of your intense equals Speaker alludes to the metaphysical quality of the woman s power by noting that her femininity is so powerful it transcends the physical world. The fragility attracts the speaker which gives her so much power over him. Fragility - The word transformed from frail to fragility. It goes form an adjective describing a noun (gesture) to a noun in its own right ( Fragility ). It now gets its own adjective intense

Stanza 4:3-4 the power of your intense whose compels me with the color of its, rendering death and forever with each breathing The speaker examines the texture of her fragility. This femininity is so large (like a country that he wants to explore) that it occupies a metaphysical world of its own. These feminine qualities can render death and forever with each breathing. This builds on the idea of the power of life and death this woman has over him.

Texture? First, how can fragility have a texture? It's a quality of a person, not something that's tangible. Also, how can a texture have colours? A texture is something you can feel, not something you see,? Not in the world of Cummings, where senses mingle in a phenomenon called synesthesia. Here again, we see the speaker being touched by things you wouldn't be able to feel in a literal sense.

Stanza 5:1-3 Brackets= speakers reflection = Makes the reader much more connected to the speaker as if he were telling them his sidethoughts. (i what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the is ) Previously in the poem the speaker has equated this woman s power with the power that spring has to open a rose. NOW he says his lover s power is even stronger than this natural, seasonal power.

Reminded once again that the woman is more powerful than a force of nature, yet her power is subtle and fragile. nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands Personificati on- implies the rain has hands.

What is up with the title? Like many poets, Cummings never gave his poems titles, so editors just use the first line as the title of each poem. That said, "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" seems like a fitting title, because the poem takes on such a surreal, yet strangely happy voyage into the weird world of the speaker and his lover.

What is up with the weird punctuation? Cummings uses unusual words, punctuation and sentence structure. WHY? The speaker seems to be attempting to understand his beloved s power over him, but he admits that her appeal is intangible and difficult to pinpoint. He cannot work out why she has this ability to move him but he welcomes it nonetheless just like his punctuation.

Poetic and language devices The idea of closing and opening recurs in this poem. The first stanza hints at this with the use of the word enclose (line 3), which becomes more significant in the light of the later reference to unclose (line 5), closed (line 6), open (line 7), close (line 9), shut (line 10) and closes/ and opens (lines 17-18) The poet skilfully makes use of imagery, and expresses the images through the use of similes and vivid personification. This can be seen in the capitalisation of Spring (line 7), and the rain s hands in the final line.

Sound devices Notice the alliteration of the hard c sound repeated in line 15 which gives extra power to the words and draws the reader s attention. The sound of the word enclose (line 3) is echoed by its opposite unclose (line 5). Perhaps Cummings is saying that in the context of his love s power over him, both actions and equally wondrous. Cummings rhymes words like "enclose", "unclose", and "rose". He also connects it all with assonance by using "open" and "opens". So, all the way through our journey, we hear the meditative "ohh" sound, which is also a subtle sonic reminder of the sense of awe in our speaker, too.

Symbols Touch There is a lot of touch imagery in this poem. You'll find mentions of fingers, hands, mysterious touches, and textures. The speaker is being touched by things that are untouchable. Lines 3-4 Lines 5-6 Lines 7-8 Lines 13-14 Line 17

Eyes Lines 1-2 Line 5: At the top of the next stanza, the speaker says that his lady's "slightest look will unclose [him]." Notice that we've gone from inscrutable, silent eyes that don't seem to be paying much attention to him to ones that are at least sparing him a glance. Smitten, he goes crazy for this and opens right up to his illusive lady. Line 19:. Here, the eyes have a "voice," but it's not any typical voice. It's "deeper than all roses." Roses wordplay conjures the image of a lady whose eyes are deep and mysterious. When the speaker looks into them, he can't quite read what's there, but he is mesmerized.

Nature Imagery

Roses Lines 7-8 Lines 9-12 Lines 17-20: The speaker ties up this extended metaphor of his lover being able to open and close him like a rose in the final stanza by saying that he has no idea how she has this mysterious power. He goes on to say that whatever this power is, it's "deeper than all roses." If we think about it, there's some deep natural force that make roses grow and if you stare into the folds of a rose's petals, it really can seem like you're staring into another dimension. You can get lost in the patterns of its design. The speaker says, "the voice of [his lover's] eyes is deeper than all roses [our emphasis]." So she's even more powerful and more mysterious than a rose.