Saturday, August 22, 2009

"pity this busy monster, manunkind"


It’s been a week with some palpable darkness in the news here in the U.S., & it’s gotten me brooding a bit. I’d planned to post a Stevens poem about the transformative power of the imagination (naturally), but as the week drew to a close it just didn’t resonate with me. Then I thought of a poem I first encountered either in high school or as an under-graduate—anyway, long time since—& I decided to post that one instead.

It’s a poem by E.E. Cummings, a poet who I think is unfairly pigeonholed as all typographical flurry & verbal hijinks. In fact, Cummings could capture a pretty wide range of lyric experience; I’ve long thought that “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” is one of the most remarkable love poems I’ve ever read.

Today’s poem, “pity this busy monster, manunkind” is a much darker poem, & really hinges on the lines “A world of made/is not a world of born” as it discusses mankind’s servitude to its own creations—not just the sinister make-believe world of advertising (the “deified” razorblade), but ultimately the whole impulse to shape the world from a position of “hypermagical omnipotence.” A dark vision in this quirky poem—appropriate, perhaps, as we in the U.S. wrestle with various dreams & creations that have unleashed some rather disturbing forces.

Hope you enjoy the poem.

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
—electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                                    A world of made
is not a world of born—pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if—listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

E. E. Cummings

16 comments:

  1. Undergraduate flashback for me, too. Masterful poem.

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  2. Hi Jacqueline:

    Interesting connection--yes, glad you liked it.

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  3. Been needing to escape myself...

    Peace - Rene

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  4. Birth is a monster ,life is a monster, death is a monster.The whole kit and Kaboodle is a horror film, thank god for the back row, the trailers and the popcorn.Love these poems John, like really!

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  5. What a brave poet, don't you think? Who else would start a piece with a negative, uncapitalized? He gives me hope for my maladjusted punctuation.

    A great little gem. I will now be exploring more e.e. for sure.

    Thanks, John! (The next universe IS looking better and better, isn't it?)

    Kat

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  6. One of my favorites, John, in my dark English major days...

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  7. (forgot to say - still resonates today)

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  8. truly shades of yesteryear so important still today and into the morrow - thanks so much for thinking of it and allowing me to remember as well - and to carry it with me through these days - great post, as usual! peace - jenean

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  9. Yet again you introduce me to poetry which, a few months ago I would have passed by without a second look. You've a lot to answer for Mr Hayes. Thanks

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  10. Hi everybody:

    Sure nice to see all your comments!

    Rene: I know the feeling. Thanks for stopping by!

    TFE: The popcorn really does help. Thanks!

    Kat: Yes, I think you'd get something from e.e. cummings, tho it's always hard to know just what to do with him!

    Karen: Ah, yes, I had those days. Glad you still like it. Thanks.

    Jenean: Glad to remind you of it, & have a wonderful day!

    Alan: Oh-oh, sounds like I'm in trouble! Thanks.

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  11. Quite the literary Bedouin, I don't know many poems by name or author. However, I have seen that title on a bathroom wall in a coffee house in New Orleans named Zotz. Don't know how the place fared after the Flood of '05, but that line stayed with me along the back hand path like a shadow of flies.
    To say the least, finally seeing the entire poem and hearing EE Cummings in its wake leaves me listless though not alone.

    I called it "Kafkatrina" at first. Then it got so beyond the pale to where I dared not call it by any name. Now I refer to that time when the levees failed euphemistically as "The Troubles".

    We all took on a compound fracture then, but our nation remains a busy monster indeed and completely at the mercy of its own momentum I'm afraid.

    But that is what make Cummings so great, and poets such a necessity. They make philosophers like Wittgenstein seem more like a flippant dilettante because, though "What can be said can be said clearly", these days we see things that no poet could pass over in silence.

    Thanks youz,
    Editilla~New Orleans Ladder

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  12. Hi Editilla:

    Thanks for stopping by. Kafkatrina is a wild concept--guess that's probably right, eh. & yes, I worry about that momentum thing.

    Thanks again--really have appreciated your support of RFB at the NO Ladder!

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  13. Whew. That's quite a journey. I love the way Cummings bends the English language to his will.

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  14. Hi Sandra: Yes, that's well put--he does "bend" language. Glad you liked it.

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  15. I've always had a fondness for Cummings. And what a great comment from Editilla!

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  16. Hi T:

    Yes, Cummings really is quite a good read. & Editilla's comment is great!

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