Concrete Poetry: Set in Stone

Matt Butcher
English 640
April 26, 2005

Concrete Poetry: Set in Stone

With e. e. cumings, is well known that he does not even capitalize his own name. Punctuation and spacing is ever-present to his poetry. It is no small wonder when reading a poem by cummings that the reader must take into account how the poem is set up on the page. This is concrete poetry at its finest.

One of cummings' poems is “she being Brand” which uses purposeful punctuation to make the point of trying to drive your first manual transmission. If you read this exceprt of the poem with the punctuation intact, you understand the rhythm of the poem as opposed to that first car drive where the engine sputters and coasts and then sputters again. It also utilizes line spacing to full effect.

she being Brand

-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 slo-wly;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
greasedlightning)just as we turned the 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

theinternalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.
stand-
;Still)

e.e. cummings

I use this poem as an example of the e.e. cummings poem to truly analzye, a concrete poem weirdly called “1(a...(a leaf falls on loneliness)”.
1(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness)

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

e.e. cummings

Concrete poems are hard to define themselves, but basically they are a “poem that forms a picture of the topic or follows the contours of a shape that is suggested by the topic” (Pravda). At first, it looks like the author kept hitting the enter key a little too often, or that the keyboard was stuck. This is not the case at all. It is all purposeful. Immediately, the reader can see the leaf falling from its height in the tree to the ground.

It may have been just me, but there was a hard to perceive difference between the author's “l” and his “1,” just like when I type it on my keyboard. This further emphasizes the lone leaf falling. Leaves do not usually fall in clumps. Does the open parenthesis allude to a beginning? Or is it another indicator of loneliness, where a single parenthesis is not complete without its partner?

The reader can see the leaf floating gently to the ground, wafting on the air currents as only leaves can do. At one point it seems to hover, with the line break after “fa/ll.”It seems to float backward, as the “l” in “loneliness” is actually on the line underneath the beginning of the word. Could it be flipping over or changing?

Cummings may have been trying to further explicate the singularity of the leaf with what looks like the French articles “la” and “le,” basically meaning “the” or a single item. There is also “one” specifically present on a single line. Even this may be an extension of the fact that there is one line made up of “ll”, indicating that two “ones” may come together, but then get separated by that final close parenthesis. Maybe the speaker is seeing the falling leaf as a kindred spirit as it falls upon him.Maybe cummings sees the coming together with the solitary leaf as his expression that not all solitude lasts forever, that eventually single objects (people) do find each other at the weirdest of moments.

Then there is that last line, “iness.” I would love to see how this was originally presented typewritten. Does the “i” further the solitude, like the “1” and the “l”? In that case, what is actually presented on the page is something like “One-ness” and one, as they say, is the loneliest number. It is presented here in a single column of text.

I have studied cummings' work before and it never ceases to amaze me that what seem to be stray marks on the paper, like in “she being Brand”, are actually purposeful marks that mean more than first appearance. Looking at “she being Brand” the first time without help makes you want to understand it, and as you read it, the jigsaw puzzle fills in. Cummings experimented with the language, spelling, punctuation, and above all, the shape of most of his poems. “1(a...(a leaf falls on loneliness)” can have no other way of being presented, in essence, a perfect concrete poem because its pattern is set.

Works cited:

PoemHunter.com. “1(a...(a leaf falls on loneliness) – e.e. cummings”. 26 April 2005. <http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=8595&poem=60055>

PoemHunter.com. “she being Brand...(XIX) – e.e. cummings”. 26 April 2005.
<http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=8595&poem=76178>

Pravda, Kay. “Concrete Poems.” 26 April 2005.
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