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Poet: e.e. cummings
Poem: i sing of Olaf glad and big
Poem of the Day:
Jul 15 2002
Comment 20 of 20, added on February 20th, 2009 at 7:44 AM.
I'm a blondish Norwegian-American, and my grandfather's name was Olaf. I never read the "blond" line as meaning anything more than a light-hearted, witty reference to his Scandinavian heritage, and nothing more need be read into it, IMHO.
Michael from United States
Comment 19 of 20, added on April 20th, 2007 at 2:49 AM.
For cummings, I agree. It is not true for every poem, though. I mean, it's always all there on the page, but there is often a puzzle to figure out which procures a deeper meaning which requires analysis, unless you can immediately pick up on all allusions and their interaction upon the first reading, thus allowing them all to affect you emotionally the FIRST time. This is very difficult for a lot of poetry. Such is true of a lot of Yeats, and a lot of the romantics.
Brendan from United States
Comment 18 of 20, added on April 6th, 2006 at 7:41 PM.
To return the discussion to the serious--the Blonde in the last line does not imply courage---the Brave reference does that. In graduate school we discussed this poem at length and had one of the foremost cummings scholars in the country come in to have a seminar with us on his poetry. The Blonde is more of an implication of 1st generation immigration---Olaf here chasing the American dream in his adopted country, yet meeting the disaster described in the poem. Olaf being more directly pure--aligned to Aryan type roots than probably the same people who were torturing him, but whose blue eyes were handed down through several generations of mixing, and diluting the purity of their roots. I have never forgotten the seminar to this day, or those comments aobut the last line of Olaf. I wrote my thesis on cummings and spent 10 pages in this poem alone---one of his most vivid and powerful.
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I'm a blondish Norwegian-American, and my grandfather's name was Olaf. I never read the "blond" line as meaning anything more than a light-hearted, witty reference to his Scandinavian heritage, and nothing more need be read into it, IMHO.
Michael from United States