what a proud dreamhorse
by ee cummings


<FONT >
what a proud dreamhorse pulling(smoothloomingly)through
(stepp)this(ing)crazily seething of this
Raving city screamingly street wonderful

flowers And o the Light thrown by Them opens

sharp holes in dark places paints eyes touches hand with new-
ness and these startled whats are a(piercing clothes thoughts kiss
-ing wishes bodies)squirm-of-frightenedshyare whichs small
its hungry for Is for Love Spring thirsty for happens
only and beautiful

there is a ragged beside the who limps
man crying silence upward
-to have tasted Beautiful to have known
Only to have smelled Happens-skip dance kids hop point at
red blue yellow voilet white orange green-
ness

o what a proud dreamhorse moving(whose feet
almost walk air). now who stops. Smiles. he
stamps</FONT f></pre>


About twelve years ago I looked at this and said to myself--"That aint the way the human mind works". I decided that cummings wrote the above poem in another version and then deliberately rearranged the words. Therefore I set out to find the original arrangement of words. I believe I succeeded but realized that it was helpful to make two small changes (merely to make the poem clearer). I replaced the words "whats" and "whichs" by the word "children". Cummings uses those types of words to represent children in other poems so the change is for clarification only. Here is what I believe to be cummings original poem before he chopped it up.



<FONT >
what a proud dreamhorse stepping smoothloomingly through
this crazily seething street of this
screamingly raving city
pulling wonderful flowers
kids skip dance hop point at
red blue yellow violet white green-ness
And o the Light thrown by Them
--piercing clothes bodies kissing thoughts wishes--
opens sharp holes in dark places--paints eyes--Smiles--
touches hands with newness
And these startled <u>children</u>
are a squirm-of-frightenedshyare <u>children</u>
thirsty for, hungry for Love
for its small Spring happens and Is only beautiful
beside the Beautiful, crying silence upward
there is a ragged man who limps
Only to have smelled-to have tasted-to have known---Happens
o what a proud dreamhorse moving
whose feet almost walk air
now who stops.
he stamps</FONT f></pre>

One can make slight changes in my arrangement of words but really one arrangement is as good as another. The point of the above is merely to demonstrate one of cummings "cheap tricks". One begins to suspect that even my version above was not the original version of the poem that cummings wrote but one that cummings had already altered. The "original" version might have been a very conventional poem indeed.
What of other cummngs poems? Cummings might have started out with very "plain Jane" poems and then in successive stages "modernized" them. Is this "art"? Or was it "art" the first time he did it and "method" the second time?

ewrgall




[This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited January 28, 2002).]

I've always quite liked e.e. cummings - what he did to poems was fun, and his poems often make me smile.

But I also suspect that his mind was not that unconventional - he like to sound radical, but really he was rather sentimental at heart. So I would never put him up there with the great modernists - Eliot, Pound or Basil Bunting, say. Maybe he's the Clown Prince of modernism?

I prefer "Of Olaf (glad & big)" and the one about the worm farm myself.

------------------
Steve Waling

In my mind, its artistry - and probably genius.

cummings could take an ordinary word, and in using it in a new and unique way, give it a feel that no one else ever could. For instance "my father moved through dooms of love" - we all know there's no such thing as "dooms of love" much less could one ever figure out how to move through such a thing. However, what we get here is a feeling of an experince which, without this simple turn of phrase, might have taken paragraphs to describe. That is what I call genius.

Cheap tricks? Maybe. But no poetic magician I know of could pull them off better or with more class than cummings.


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Just one person's opinion.
Davida Chazan

Unfortunately for me, I don't get anything from "my father moved through dooms of love." To me, it's a nearly meaningless phrase--the sort of thing new poets often try to say.

So, we don't agree on that line, but I think cummings was more talented than he is often credited with being.

Julie