E.e. Cummings

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 12th grade September 2001

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This poem by E.E. Cummings main goal is to conjure up feeling of oneness. The form that the poem is in, including the way that Cummings placed his stanzas is obvious that he trying to produce the sense of solitude. But, he defeats his whole point by concentrating all of his own attention at that one task. Leaving out his emotion and only entering in the dispossessed meaning of aloneness. This poem with its style of unconventional punctuation could have been easily simplified by Cummings if he had only given us ("a leaf falls:/loneliness"). This way he would have conveyed the same message without the mystery of the ideogram. But, like most things in life we must take a closer look to figure out what the real message is.

The first word that stands out would have to be loneliness, the single most important human emotion that the poem produces.

Looking deeply, you start to think of a gloomy day where leafs on your trees begin to fall. There is only one leaf singled out by this poem as one feels when lonely. Single, with no one else.

Now at first glance one only thinks of the apparent meaning of the letters that are written. But, could E.E. Cummings also have been trying to make us visualize a leaf falling off its high tree and down its modernistic dwelling? When trying to visualize a leaf, in slow motion, falling to the ground what does one think of? First fast like a plain, barrel rolling to the ground the letters start off "(a" changing to "le", and "af" making a complete flip to form "fa" indicating the first part of the drop of the leaf. Then slowing, after the quick drop of the line "lls", with a longer line, "one". Then finally to the ground with the rest of the leaves it hits the floor "iness".

Four misshapen words are all it takes to yield emotions on so many levels. Visually it is a masterpiece, symbolically it is the making of a cross or a flag, and emotionally it sends the reader through a dark hole that that opens at the bottom, invoking feelings that are hard to believe are read through the lines