cummings and goings

      For reasons entirely inexplicable, reading tonight turned my toward e.e. cummings, a writer alternately brilliant and bewildering, but arguably one of the most capital-I "Innocent" poets ever to put verse to page. My attention tonight turned toward cummings' love poems, which for various reasons tend to get forgotten when people think about cummings. So this blog figured it would turn your eyes three of ee's love sonnets, each as charged and as provocative any more deliberately-lurid writing.

"my girl's tall with hard long eyes"

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin ligs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die.   When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

"sometimes i am alive because with"

sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant

the moment pleasingly frightful

when,her mouth suddenly rising, wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)


"i like my body when it is with your"

i like my body when it is with your
body.   It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.   i like what it does,
i like its hows.   i like to feel the sping
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss,   i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

And there are some wonderful phrasal delights ("silence on her dress," "white shocking wire," "we grimly go to bed," "intense large togethercoloured instant," "a murdering rain," "your electric fur," to name just a smattering). "And eyes big love-crumbs" has to be one of the most inspired phrases in all of romantic poetry. Beautiful stuff. Now go make love to somebody.