New background, new post, new topic!

In celebration of finding a new background, I thought a new post was in order as well. The only problem is I haven't finished any books since my last post (although I am working on a few). So I thought I'd mix it up with some poetry! Yes! Poetry is, as Robert Frost said, "a way of taking life by the throat." One of my top five favorite poets is e.e. cummings. I can just imagine the shock on your faces in the thought that I made a spelling mistake although it wouldn't be my first. His name is not capitalized and as you read his poetry, as I do hope you will, you may see why. Allow me to expose you to him if you have not been already. This poem, although not my favorite by him, simply speaks for itself.

you shall above all things be glad and young.

For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad

whatever's living will yourself become.

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's

flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid

and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave

called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

This poem does not have a title because, like Emily Dickinson, cummings did not title most of his poems so they are primarily known by their first line. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what this poem means. With the first reading of a cummings' poem you have to read it with the thought of "art for art's sake" even if that is not what he intended. Only after several, several readings and careful study of the punctuation and word form can one even come within an inch of grasping what cummings really meant. For now I'd just like to focus on the final lines.

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance"

I've thought about this a little lately and have drawn a conclusion. Unfortunately it's one of those thoughts that just doesn't make sense when I try to say it. But I feel I might as well try. I kind of see it this way. Imagine a room full of experts who know one topic so well that any of them could teach you perfectly. Now imagine a room full of artists that are busy creating beautiful works in a variety of mediums. Would it be more difficult to stop the artists from creating or to find just one of the experts to teach you? Or rather, which would be more painful?

If you liked this poem, even a little bit, I would recommend you read two of his more famous poems "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "in Just-" as well as my personal favorite "since feeling is first"