lengthy, but enjoyable if you like cummings

[tiakait]

okay.  i've been an e.e. cummings fan forever...ever since i picked up "selected poems" by accident, I've been head over heals for his stuff.  but i really like his prose pieces the best.   here i've copy and pasted his introduction to NEW POEMS,--- i have the whole piece basically memorized by heart. i want to get a line from this piece inked, and

Comments

[aisforalisha]

I want an excerpt from "you said Is" by cummings tattooed on my arm..:

Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered

I just love the personification of the wind and rain and I feel like sometimes we get too busy with 'our flowers' [ie: our jobs and such] that sometimes we don't stop to 'smell them' or consider other parts of life.

[tiakait]

i love this poem!! great excerpt idea.

but i've never thought of 'our flowers' as jobs and such, the way i've always interpreted it was that the rain is too busy creating something beautiful to bother about believing...especially in always, because flowers never last for always, but that's not the point of creating beautiful things.....hmmor something like that. i've never tried to explain it before i guess. what i like about the poems is that they somehow can't be explained to a T, because sometimes it's just a feeling you get after you read the line, not a slap in the face meaning. oh god, look at how i've rambled! ha, but anyway. where on the arm?

[aisforalisha]

oh, I wasn't saying 'that's what it means' just the feeling I get from it.. I saw it as the rain's job is to water the flowers and make them grow and it's so busy doing that thus not worrying about things like 'always'.

but then again, who knows?

[tiakait]

ohhh i see how you read it now. makes sense.
lovely how the same poem affects people completely different, isn't it?
and yea. the feeling....that's what cummings poetry is about... :D

[shoelaceswitch]

Oh my, I like so many of these lines!

Of the ones you bolded, I like:
-We can never be born enough.

Of ones you didn't bold, I really like:
-You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. (I don't know if I'd want DOOM! tattooed on myself, however, I think it's a really cool sentence.)
-Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

dangerous loosness of doom

[tiakait]

doesn't that line give you such a fantastic visual?... it would be cool for a tattoo because it says 'you and i'...and really only those who know cummings would really understand, maybe. i suppose doom wouldn't be so bad as long as it wasn't like this--->DOOM!
haha. actually, i could probably work out a sweet font twist on just that word, like make it really 'loose' looking (loosness of doom) ?

Looseness of DOOM!

[shoelaceswitch]

haha yeah, that would be cool! :) Good luck deciding, and be sure to post pictures when you get it!

Re: dangerous loosness of doom

[rentsarehigh]

adding my vote for the dangerous looseness of DOOM.
haha. i'd think you actually would have to keep the "and find it becoming" or else you might come off a little creepy (to non cummings fans at least)

[enzorukin]

out of the bolded text, my absolute favorite is, "we can never be born enough." i also really like, "tie it to my hand," which would look really great in quotation marks, too (my next tattoo is going to be in quotes because of the context).

[tiakait]

i've been wondering about quotation marks too.
but that makes complete sense...and works really well with "tie it to my hand"--andwould work perfect on an arm, yea?!

solid. what's the next tattoo, in context?

[enzorukin]

it would be perfect for an arm tattoo! that was the part that moved me the most out of the whole thing you posted. so incredible, especially if you're an artist of any kind. and i love punctuation, so the quotation marks i think would look beautiful and symmetric.

my next tattoo (i actually just made a post here about it) is going to be the phrase, "Live forever!" which is a ray bradbury reference. it's from an autobiographical story he tells (i think it may be published as the introduction to one of his books of short stories, but it's also on his website here: http://raybradbury.com/inhiswords02.html). the story is just incredible and that phrase hit me like a bolt of lightning. still does!

[just_egotrippin]

This was so awesome, thanks for posting it! I especially love the last line.. cummings can always grab me with the perfect combination of words in a way that not many can. :)

[fauxgasms]

This made me cry. I have two lines of "since feeling is first" on my back: "wholly to be a fool/ while Spring is in the world". Pics are somewhere in this comm; if you really want them, let me know and I'll post here.

By far the best line in this, in my opinion, is "We can never be born enough."

[tiakait]

i'd love to see it!

[fauxgasms]