Quotes from E.E. Cummings

Any apparent somewhere which you may inhabit is always at the mercy of a ruthless and omnivorous everywhere.

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart(I carry it in my heart)

Favor everything without exception that makes people different: discourage everything whatsoever that makes people alike. The Rest follows

your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

I gave him a pleasant smile, which said, If I could see your intestines very slowly embracing a large wooden drum rotated by means of a small iron crank turned gently and softly by myself, I should be extraordinarily happy

There is some shit I shall not eat, and I will not kiss your fucking flag!

Now is the time when all occasional things close into silence.

i will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls Will i complete the mystery of my flesh I will rise After a thousand years lipping flowers And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

Because of his unusual way of handling language, Cummings had to travel a long road from the time his early books were ridiculed for their eccentricity to the point at which, with Robert Frost, he was one of the two most popular poets in America.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we're not poets.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder thats keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

And still the mad magnificent herald Spring assembles beauty from forgetfulness with the wild trump of April:witchery of sound and odour drives the wingless thing man forth into bright air,for now the red leaps in the maple's cheek,and suddenly by shining hordes in sweet unserious dress ascends the golden crocus from the dead.

Why according to tomorrow's paper the proletariat will not rise yesterday.

you shall above all things be glad and young

Querying greys between mouthed houses curl thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane, the poetic carcass of a girl

the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

what does it all come down to? love? Love if you like and i like, for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love, love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason that i do not fall into this street is love.

King Christ,this world is all aleak; and lifepreservers there are none: and waves which only He may walk Who dared to call Himself a man.

the ponderous ferocity of silence….

never boast your dead beauties, mine being unto me sweeter (of whose shy delicious glance things which never more shall be, perfect things of faerie, are intense inhabitants; in whose warm superlative body do distinctly live all sweet cities passed away— in her flesh at break of day are the smells of Nineveh, in her eyes when day is gone are the cries of Babylon.)

love's to giving as to keeping's give; as yes is to if,love is to yes

I will touch you with my mind. Touch you and touch and touch until you give me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene; I will touch you with my mind. Touch you, that is all, lightly and you utterly will become with infinite care the poem which I did not write.