dead every enourmous piece - A poem by e.e. cummings

Comment 2 of 4, added on March 10th, 2006 at 5:54 PM.

I did not find this poem to be bland. I think it says a lot of thoughtful things in a way that is not only trimmed of all excess, but indeed stuffed with double meanings, non-sequential branches and loops by internal reference, and external references to supplementary information. I spent several minutes looking for connections between fragments of the poem that are not necessarily placed together on the page, and it is full of them. I found the opening line of the poem to beg this process, with the open-ended verb "is" (fill in the blank), which can then go to the next line or back to the first word, "dead."
The treatment of antonyms is quite elegant, and enormous pieces of nonsense like wondering "the meaning" of life become redirected towards a statement that the whole invention of meaning comes by contrast of a thing with its environment and listing differences in your mind.

dead/alive
enormous/submicroscopic
eternity/moment

Each pair is interrelated, forming two groups describing simple, yet spacially and temporaly overwhelming observations to identify all of human existance as ultimately pointlike.

I shouldn't go on forever about the specific details of my ameteur, poorly informed analysis, (I could write pages of ideas that I have about this poem, but I'm just inventing things anyway if you can't tell, don't trust me as being an informed analist.) but will end with one more comment about external references. here is another pair of words:

nonsense/lear

external reference: now look up Edward Lear (1812-1888) - English painter and nonsense poet...

ryan from United States

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