1(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
1(a… (a leaf falls on loneliness)
Analysis, meaning and summary of e.e. cummings's poem 1(a… (a leaf falls on loneliness)
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This is the first poem by e.e.cummings I came into contact with some years ago. It kicked off a long relationship with this extrordinary poet.It took me some time to puzzle it out when BAM!!!! there it was. It affected me so much chills ran up and down my spine and I shed tears giggleing in awe of its simple power It, revealing its self like one of those three dee magic eye paintings and ahh!!! I have to agree with all assesments regarding its visualness the repeating of “1” To put the letters in any other order in my oppinion would steal its elegant thunder.
A Fall from a state of happiness to a state of loneliness is key…
It is a fall from a state of happiness to a state of loneliness…
Graphic poem. Open reading.
My interpretation:
Every life (mine “I” included) and death (the fall of a leaf) is an unique and personal experience (oneliness/loneliness).
The image of the falling leaf as the end of life is not new.
It reminds me of Rielke´s
“But there is one who keeps this fall, infinitely gentle in his hand”.
a poem is only alive while it is being read or thought about. As soon as the reader knows what the poem says or means, he or she moves on to another experience, leaving the poem it self to flutter to the ground much like the words in the poem l(a
i love this poem cuz it has no proper anything and it doesnt even make sense! it rocks!! and it didnt get 18/20 points cuz it is a good poem and it is cool and stuff like that. and my english teacher can eat it for breakfast. it may sound like i have a lot of anger here and i do! but this poem is really awesome!
E.E.Cummings once said that how you read a poem affects what you get from it, so to some, they’ll read the last part as “oneliness” while others will see it as “loneliness”, suggesting the latter is, infact, lonesome.
cummings typed his poetry on a typewriter. Manual typewriters and electric typewriters were designed so that the lowercase letter “l” and the number “1” were identical. Typing classes instructed students to hit the lowercase “l” key to type the number one in order to save time.
Take the poem. Type it using a Courier font. cummings was most definitely making use of the double meaning conveyed by a single character.
This poem is very lovely and I can someone feel the quite sigularity that is the leaf in the poem.
There is some emphasis on the characters and breaking up of the lines in the poem.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The l’s definitely do look like ones. and “iness” I would guess to mean the state of being yourself, the word one in “loneliness”, “le” of “leaf” I often think of being french (in which Cummings does indeed use in some poems) for “the” an article denoting singularity and so on, and the separated a and f pairs in the “leaf falls”. What I can’t understand is why he had the two l’s paired together in “falls” if all this holds true?
I guess that I’m looking to deep for something that isn’t there.
I have heard it argued that this particular poem is not art. I disagree completely.
Of course, it is most often read l(a leaf falls)oneliness, or “a leaf falls inside of / in loneliness.”
But that cannot encapsulate the full meaning of the poem. The line breaks themselves are infinitely important.
“l(a” As has been suggested, that first “l” could be a 1. In that case, it would be 1(a, kind of like the first quesiton on a test. Perhaps this suggests a beginning–enhanced by the presence of the open parenthesis…A suggestion that even in a singular moment of time, all is not static.
“le
af
fa
ll” Here I’m going to interrupt again. The possibility of the first “l” being a “1” has been suggested, but what if all of the “l”s were “1”s? This would be two ones together. Again, even loneliness is not omnipresent.
“s)
one” I’m surprised that this has not been mentioned before! There’s a real “one” in the middle of the poem!
“l” Here’s the old “l” / “1” thing again.
“iness” iness. I-ness. The state of being I, being one, being alone. A wholeness that is inherently lonely.
Some general comments: In the moment that a leaf falls, it is completely alone. It leaves the safety of the tree above and eventually is embraced by the warm earth–but in the moment in between, it is suspended in the air, falling eternally. Yet even that utter loneliness does not last forever.
The simplicity of the poem is another thing that attracts me to it. It is truly the pinnacle of minimalism. Yet, through brilliant mastery, cummings managest to evoke as strong an image as other poets have with thousands of words.
I first read this poem about a year and a half ago, and it has influenced me more than The Odyssey ever did.
But, back to the minimalism, a leaf falling really is a single moment in time. I kind of like that suggestions of cummings’ interpretations are little more than suggestions. We know he found something about the moment to be lonely, but anything more than that is left to the reader–either a great puzzle or a starting point for a wonderful brainstorm.
And to think that I first thought he had fallen asleep on his typewriter or something of the sort…
It is a quiet simple statement of what is and what cannot be changed. Alone and without…though there is a subtle suggestion that the alone-ness is not alone because there are others who are experiencing the same…or are there?
Frank from Singapore touched upon this lightly.
I also like Jordan’s idea of “peaceful origin”.
Why is ee cummings a poet? This poem digs deep into the poe revealing whats inside. I like this 10/10.
15 bucks, little man…put that shit, in my hand if that $ doesnt show, then you’ll owe me owe me OH!!!!
did anyone ever think that the poem could be put together a different way, instead of just the word loneliness, mabey theres other words that could be put together, you never know?
when the leaf falls it becomes disunited. It seperates and falls. It is no longer connected with everything else and on its own. However that is not the end of the story. Its unique end is something to behold and appreciate. We can see its graceful fall to the ground. The fact of its end is as beautiful to behold as its origins were. That is why it is not merely a poem but a concrete poem. A picture to take home and not just an idea to ponder. l(a leaf falls)oneliness
Each fall of each leaf is unique and whole and complete and tells the whole story. It is wholeness. It is completeness. It is being the whole universe. Which all beings share each in its own unique way.
Well I personally think that here e.e. cummings is just stateing plain as day, that no leaf falls with another leaf.. they all fall alone. If you think about this it is very true because in life when your at the pits of life you feel like you are alone and that you got their alone. Thereby “falling” alone… sometimes poets don’t have any hidden meanings or anything, its just stated right there. For example: some of you are trying to explain the poems struture, but I think its just a vizual of a leaf falling, nothing more.
~God bless~
One way of reading the poem would be to ask why ‘a leaf falls’ appears in the middle of the word ‘loneliness’. The effect of this is to draw out the word, and thus prolong its duration when pronounced. Is the effect of this to suggest the slowness of time to the lonely subject? Or does the poem draw attention to a state of extreme isolation in which an event as seemingly unimportant as a leaf falling is enough to disrupt the entire structure of the poem? The disconcerting effect of this disruption for the reader could be indicative of a general feeling of confusion in the poem. With the inevitable connotation of death hanging over everything, it is difficult to salvage any sense of positivity, value or worth in the text. However, the gentleness of the single image we are given, and the slender and willowy structure of the poem itself, forces a sense of ambivalence upon us that is difficult to clarify. Presumably such effects are part of Cummings’ intention.
This poem is very lovely and I can someone feel the quite sigularity that is the leaf in the poem.
There is some emphasis on the characters and breaking up of the lines in the poem.
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The l’s definitely do look like ones. and “iness” I would guess to mean the state of being yourself, the word one in “loneliness”, “le” of “leaf” I often think of being french (in which Cummings does indeed use in some poems) for “the” an article denoting singularity and so on, and the separated a and f pairs in the “leaf falls”. What I can’t understand is why he had the two l’s paired together in “falls” if all this holds true?
I guess that I’m looking to deep for something that isn’t there.
firstly, i want to say how impressed i am that someone was interested enough in cummings to create a website featuring his work, thank you for that, this poem, which i think is actually read “a leaf falls IN loneliness”, is great because it says so much but is so simple. the way Cummings was able to manipulate the rules of modern language to get his point across is amazing
Is there anything worse than the loneliness in this poem? I frantically search to form the word Loneliness, but I miss the first L, for the nearest compatible L I see is the 2nd one, which was never meant to be in place of the first.
The (falling leaf) , and all things in Life, has distracted me from finding the true 1 that makes me complete.