Wednesday 11 July 2012

Day 20: Greenly


Poetry reminds us that life is indeed wonderful. EE Cumming's ecstatic avant-garde verses are a great example of this, no more so than this hymn of gratitude, 'i thank You God.'

EE Cummings was a poet who could successfully manipulate language to express feeling. Note the unusual syntax in this poem. And the effects.

This is a poem that effectively captures what a beautiful day feels like. And how we should see the world: with the ears of our ears awakened and the eyes of our eyes opened.




i thank You God - ee cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

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