On a Poem by E. E. Cummings (original) (raw)
Blue Fifth Review
An alternative analysis of the well-known E. E. Cummings poem that begins “in Just- / spring”
Related papers
E. E. Cummings: The New Nature Poetry and the Old
Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, 2000
This essay takes its title from a 1959 essay by Robert Langbaum called "The New Nature Poetry." Langbaum's essay was a pioneering foray into the vast and complex topic of modernist nature poetry: as such, it provides us with a convenient and logical starting point for an investigation into Cummings' nature poetry. Langbaum's essay makes two large claims: first, that in contrast to the Romantics' religious veneration of nature as teacher, guide, and nurse, the nature poetry of modernists like Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, and D. H. Lawrence stressed "the mindlessness of nature, its nonhuman otherness" (102). To that end, modernist poets avoided projecting "human feelings into natural objects" (104). In other words, they avoided what critics call the pathetic fallacy. The paper explores ways in which Cummings' nature poetry fits (or doesn't fit) Langbaum's paradigm of the nature poetry of American modernists.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.