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Introduction From Collected Poems - e e Cummings

This introduction summarizes the themes of the collected poems. It distinguishes the poems as being for the speaker and reader, not "mostpeople", who are described as snobs who see birth as a catastrophe rather than a mystery. In contrast, the speaker sees life as an ongoing process of growth and views themselves and the reader as "human beings" who find mystery in birth rather than seeing it as something to avoid. The passage criticizes "mostpeople" for prioritizing standards of living focused on passivity rather than active living. It asserts that the speaker and reader reject false notions of reality and perfection, instead embracing life's imperfections and continual rebirth. The introduction concludes by promising the poems will contain continual growth and

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261 views1 page

Introduction From Collected Poems - e e Cummings

This introduction summarizes the themes of the collected poems. It distinguishes the poems as being for the speaker and reader, not "mostpeople", who are described as snobs who see birth as a catastrophe rather than a mystery. In contrast, the speaker sees life as an ongoing process of growth and views themselves and the reader as "human beings" who find mystery in birth rather than seeing it as something to avoid. The passage criticizes "mostpeople" for prioritizing standards of living focused on passivity rather than active living. It asserts that the speaker and reader reject false notions of reality and perfection, instead embracing life's imperfections and continual rebirth. The introduction concludes by promising the poems will contain continual growth and

Uploaded by

MartíndeSouza
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction from Collected Poems - e e cummings

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople.
-it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in
common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human
beings:mostpeople are snobs.
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe
unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultra
voluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with
every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof
safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably
call it dyingyou and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is
a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:the mystery which happens only and
whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find
it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now;and now is much too busy being a little more than
everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.
Life,for mostpeople,simply isn't. Take the socalled standardof living. What do mostpeople mean
by 'living'? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to
singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in
selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives can spot a
genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.
-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly
scientific parlourgame of real unreality,the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to
the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman a king,hasn't a wheel to stand on.
What their most synthetic not to mention transparent majesty,mrsadmr collective foetus,would
improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn't an undream of anaesthetized impersons,or a cosmic
comfortstation,or a transcendentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily
complex,a naturally homogeneous,citizen of immortality. The now of his each pitying free
imperfect gesture,his any birth or breathing,insults perfected inframortally millenniums of
slavishness. He is a little more than everything,he is democracy; he is alive:he is ourselves.
Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who
can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near
him,when his fingers would not hold a brush 'tie it into my hand'nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal.
Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and
known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous,true.
Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are
among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface:nowhere
hating or to fear;shadow, mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only
each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the
murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and
rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and
cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have:only to grow.
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

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