There’s a nonspecific gladness that envelops humanity within the first days of spring, as if kindness itself have been coming abloom within the cracks of crowded sidewalks, quelling our fears, swallowing our sorrows, salving the savage loneliness. We’re reminded then that spring — this insentient byproduct of the form of our planet’s orbit and the lean of its axis — could be Earth’s existential superpower, the supreme affirmation of life within the face of each assault on it.
That superpower comes alive with dazzling may in a century-old poem by E.E. Cummings (October 14, 1894–September 3, 1962), initially revealed in his 1923 assortment Tulips & Chimneys (public library) — that epochal gauntlet on the conventions of poetry, which went on to affect generations of writers, readers, and daring makers of the unexampled throughout the spectrum of inventive work — and skim on the fifth annual Universe in Verse by the polymathic inventive pressure that’s Debbie Millman, with a facet of Bach.
[O SWEET SPONTANEOUS]
by e.e. cummingsO candy spontaneous
earth how typically have
the
dotingfingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
pokedthee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thymagnificence how
typically have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing andbuffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(however
trueto the incomparable
sofa of loss of life thy
rhythmic
loverthou answerest
them solely with
spring)
Couple with spring with Emily Dickinson, then revisit E.E. Cummings (who, opposite to in style fantasy, signed his name both lowercase and capitalized) on the courage to be yourself.
For different highlights from The Universe in Verse, savor Roxane Homosexual studying Gwendolyn Brooks’s “To the Young Who Want to Die,” Zoë Keating studying Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms,” Rebecca Solnit studying Helene Johnson’s “Trees at Night,” and a collection of animated poems celebrating nature.
