e.e. cummings

Not long ago I said and I did it even here, that I would not buy any new book before I had not read the 32 already gathering around my bed, waiting to be read. Well, to send that much right ahead: I did not keep my word. SURPRISE SURPRISE. But I did it for a book of poems by e.e.cummings, by nobody else, so I think I can forgive myself. I wonder how I could so far survive without a book of poems by e.e.cummings Its true! I am not kidding! Finally there is somebody who explains to me this world through which I  have stumbled without much of an orientation for a long long time.

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

 His poems have a style which I never encountered before. He does exactly what, I to be frank, expect of somebody who writes poems. He finds new words or else new positions for words, we all know but have never understood thoroughly or in that way. He finds a new language really in order to say what he wants to say. There is an architecture in his poems which helps to build a new world, the world of e.e.cummings. I have not fully understood why but I feel at home in this world. He is for once courageous and an adventurer, that I like, of course. By building this new world he makes it possible for me to see my world in a fully new way, from a different angle. Very liberating, every time and so of course I love his poems. I breathe the ever same angles out, his poems break something open and create thus a new room in which I can meet my world and myself anew. I read one of his poems and everything is crystalclear.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis.

 If one wants to be a master of language and I suppose everybody who writes poems aims to be a master of language he is allowed, no he is in a way forced, to play with language, to try it out, to evolve with new possibilities, new structures, new meanings. To change everything is almost a recommendation because for me, a good poem wants to express the deepest human condition one found after diving very deep. Sometimes one might even dive too deep and anyway, what you find in the depth longs for a language, that is as deep and which you dont just use in the store to buy a bread. Otherwise, why not?

"may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile."

I will admit it only once and only here because it actually is embarrassing: e.e.cummings is my idol. I would love to be able to write like him, no, not like him, but like me. I want to write like me the way he wrote like e.e.cummings if that makes any sense. I want to create my susanneworld in which i dig for my susannehumanity and express it as deep as possible. And I would love to invite everybody into this world who feels he or she could be at home in it.

By the way: Björk wrote a song after a poem by e.e.cummings: Sun in my mouth .