The poem
Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you're flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shops and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down
on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity
i hate you
Agree. Seems to set well in the gut.
feel]
this is true & hopefull of things to come (
if they have not already come to pass). [i
to me this poem spits in the face of all humainty. it seems as though he is angry at the world for taking advantage of everything it has to offer, and he hides it through satire and irony and he dosnt honestly come out with it until the last stanza "i hate you"
i really enjoy this poem! it helps express how i, personally, feel about all humanity! i'm glad i have foudna poem that i can relate to.
Cummings' use of sarcasm and irony in the poem is really affective...I'm disappointed at how negatively he views the world and humanity. I tend to believe that not all of humanity is as ignorant to what life is as what he describes.
This is a very intense poem that is very full of proof and truth. I do not find it cynical. Everyday we commit crimes against ourselves to keep peace or make a living. Our cries are stifled by a society that finds inner strength less attractive than outward success.
to me, it doesn't seem so much angry as cynical and sad -- disappointed. Like he wants to love humanity, but its follies overreach his love and make him disgusted and sad.
I'm only 16 years old and have been asked to write about this poem in my end of year exam. This is poem is worth recognition for the fact that it gets so many people worked up over Humanities faults. I've read evryones comments hear, agreeing & disagreeing with his point of view. But I believe he is just trying to get people to acknowledge our faults and realize that we must do something if we are to keep ourselves peacefully detached from the rest of the earth. Although he does conclude "Humanity i hate you" which i agree with a few other commenters, he seems to have been let down. Almost as if he believed in us as a whole. For me it induced a great deal of Shame.
Just a comment!
As humans (as in humanity) we are not perfect, and we all possess the ability to perform both good & evil tasks - (the duality of man); hence the love/hate of humanity, You cannot have one with out the other. But then again, this is only the second poem I have ever read.
i feel that the next to last lines: "because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you" reflect cummings' own feelings about his work - is it worth making art in the hope of fighting the fear of death?
I believe that this the sarcasm that is used in this poem is social commentary on humanity. When e.e. cummings uses the phrase "humanity i love you" it is just sarcasm and at the end of the poem when it says "i hate you" it is the speaker's real feelings coming out not covered by a thin film of sarcasm.
unfortunately he`s right.
he seems to love humanity but yet he feels sad and discusted at the same time
i chose this poem for a project for my highschool poetry unit. like many of the poems cummings wrote, this one is satirical and has a sarcastic tone to it. this makes it effective, like people had said in the above comments. It was really helpful for me to understand the poem more, now that i have heard other people's perspectives. Thanks for all the help.
he's using sarcasm to show his distaste for society and also his thoughts on World War 1 he wrote this right after
laura baby he hates humanity he doesn't love it he's using irony and sarcasm read it and try actually hearing him
1st off laura, baby, disgust... dusgust... secondly you should adopt stupid's name. working on a term paper, Cummings is my favorite poet. I love poetry and am said to be good at it, finding sites with expert criticism though is not my strong point. I need some quotable (citable rather) sources for the criticism section of my paper, any ideas? I need people who are intelligent enough to realize the obvious sarcasm/ be able to securely and acurately analyze poetry.
"E.E. Cummings is a heavy user of sarcasm and personification in his poetry. He follows very closely the guidelines of modernistic imagism, covering his true and honest feelings only with a thin layer of sarcasm, still making his true point strongly felt by the reader. And at the end of this poem, Cummings even ceases use of that and just comes straight out and makes his point flat out. Another strong element…
Read the whole comment"E.E. Cummings is a heavy user of sarcasm and personification in his poetry. He follows very closely the guidelines of modernistic imagism, covering his true and honest feelings only with a thin layer of sarcasm, still making his true point strongly felt by the reader. And at the end of this poem, Cummings even ceases use of that and just comes straight out and makes his point flat out. Another strong element present here is his use of personification, evident throughout the poem. Not only does he use personification as the overall picture of humanity, but he also uses this personification along with material metaphors to emphasize upon the selfish nature of humanity."
this is the introduction to my research paper on his poem. SUGGESTIONS, TIPS, CRITICISM WELCOMED AND ENCOURAGED!!!!!!
Love this poem,basically he;s saying humanity is full of fuc-ers who are more interested in peoples status and front than who they are internally "Whose soul dangles from his watch chain".
He says we possess a bit of morality admist all the crap things we do but mostly in the end he is resigned to us being blind to "importance of life",to what life is,we are continually forgeting it's there like lost car keys.
the last lines are a redemption of mankind.
cummings does not stray from sarcasm even at the end, and perhaps begrudgingly, turns his condemnation on its head because of mankind's willingness to "make poems in the lap of death" (create in the midst of its own suffering, mortality and denial)
Humanity i love you
I have three favorite poems...Ozymandias by P.B. Shelley, Raisin in the Sun by Langston Hughes and Humanity i love you by e.e. cummings. ...."that you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch chain". In other words, we fawn over the rich and famous, envy them, try to be them but never stop to consider what we corrupt within ourselves along the road of becoming. The…
Read the whole commentI have three favorite poems...Ozymandias by P.B. Shelley, Raisin in the Sun by Langston Hughes and Humanity i love you by e.e. cummings.
...."that you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch chain". In other words, we fawn over the rich and famous, envy them, try to be them but never stop to consider what we corrupt within ourselves along the road of becoming. The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is an interesting and excellent extension of this theme. Can anyone actually achieve great financial success without sacrificing their soul...and the souls of many others? Were we all not so willing to throw principles aside to achieve our personal "success", this would be a much different and more beautiful world. Just ask Bernie Madoff, Hosni Mubarek or Kadafi...or maybe Bill Clinton, George Bush or Barak Obama. Just how many souls are dangling from those watch chains?
e.e cummings disgusts me as well, b/c he adopts a superior tone, as if he is the only one righteous and good enough to look down upon the foolish mass of humanity and judge them.
I like best that Jesus loved us before we loved him, and that is why we love him. Yes, we are selfish, deeply flawed creatures, who else could have loved us the way we were and are? Not e.e. cummings, he too good.