Elizabeth

http://www.english-grammar-revolution.com

What you say is almost always correct in general but you lose out so much on the particular. Like so much depends on it!

This is a great poem. I read it first as a teenager and hadn’t had sex yet, so I was really interested in what it might mean. And even though I couldn’t yet fill in that blank in apposition before the “it,” I laughed my head off. Because sex is so silly, of course–imagine the absurd positions we human beings get into, what is more argue!

Still I want someone to tell me:

a.) what happens after “it;”

b.) is the poem one sentence or a run-on or what, and what does this tell us about the dynamics of this particular fuck?

The genius of Cummings is the fun, and even when it’s spring again for the umpteenth time the hurdy-gurdy of his poetry has to makes anybody dance!

Christopher

I started reading that cummings and swore it was creeley. I think you can find that style of poetry carved in the lavatories at Harvard; the cummings/creeley style was invented at Harvard, by William James, I imagine, while he was on nitrous oxide; he did some experiments with Gertrude Stein while she was at Radcliffe (look into my eyes…you are getting sleepy…now I want you to write…write…write whatever comes into your head…good…good…) cummings got a bachelors and a masters at harvard, magna cum laude, imagine that, and then creeley, he went to harvard and studied those things…so there you go.

i went to harvard i sd
& i learned this
stuff in thayer hall
i sd you know me
better than that
don’t you?

Thomas

A very interesting post. I’ve trained myself away from the long sentence, both in poetry and prose. I still use them, and admire them in others (sometimes) but the dose of theoretical and philosophical writing that I found myself wading through in the 1980s made me want to distinguish myself from that style of writing. Orwell was a major influence as soon a I got to Europe, not to mention the fact that I spent many years teaching kids [in fact I was only twenty-one when I started] how to construct sentences and essays. A lot of that meant breaking rhetorical habits that they’d formed in their own languages.

Translating long sentences from foreign languages (my experiences are French, Spanish and Portuguese) involves many of the same difficulties as reading them, but at a more exaggerated level.

Long sentences in English tend to be enumerative and often use parallel construction, like in the C.K. Williams poem posted above by Jeffrey Thomson, or “Howl”, mentioned by Michael Robbins. Whitman is another good example. It’s interesting to note that this tendency gains a foothold initially in a project of translation: The King James Bible.

One famous passage in English prose that perfectly illustrates these devices, and which has a biblical rhythm to it, is from A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens). “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

There are plenty of exceptions. Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Johnson both favored the complexities (contrary to what Orwell would later espouse) of our Latin heritage. Which brings me to my point. The most difficult thing about translating long sentences from Latin Languages into English, is that the grammar and syntax of these languages are less restrictive, more malleable and generally follow a different set of rules. Trying to translate a long sentence from a Romance language into English can be like trying to fit a square into a circle.

Portuguese, probably the most flexible of all modern Romance languages even dispenses, in many cases, with the pronoun, which is subsumed by the verb terminations. But of course, at this level, there are often duplications. In the middle of a paragraph-long sentence it becomes very difficult to trace antecedents, or to follow the relationship between the principal predication and the clausal flow. Often new principal predicates will be introduced half way through. Decoding meanings is often half the problem (even, I’ve found, for the authors that have written the sentences in the first place). After decoding, you have to fit the square into the circle. Imagine using Photoshop to try to change a Mannerist portrait by Parmigianino into a Renaissance fresco by Piero della Francesca.

Martin

I think my analysis of the long space before “it” is spot on, but I don’t think I fully grasped the remainder of the poem, and why though bifurcated, and perhaps even a run-on, it still functions as one sentence.

Wow!

(Anyone else see what I mean? Or is it so obvious you all assumed that of course I had noticed.)

Christopher

–new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute I was back in neutral tried and

again slow-ly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greased lightning just as we turned to corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

…………………………it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the

internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allof her tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

………………………………………e.e.cummings

Note:
[I used periods to get both "it" and the name of the author way out to the right because the blog format doesn't support extra spaces.

The interesting thing about the "it" is whether or not it starts a new sentence. The little pronoun's position is key to the poems success, I would say. the space being the gas itself ("the juice,good") filling in, almost like an appositive, so in my opinion the sentence does go right on as does what it's describing. You don't stop here!]

“Miami Heart” ends with the line, “which is why/one writes with one’s desire.” Indeed, I wonder if perhaps a lot of such poems aren’t sexual–like C.K.Williams ravishing “Love: Beginnings.” Thanks for that. I didn’t know him but used to see him around the streets of Paris, so tall and gaunt he was unmistakable, so the last two lines make me love him too.