"i carry your heart" by E E Cummings (poetry reading)

There's a high-quality wedding video using this reading here. If you're of a romantic disposition watch this video and don't read what I say about the poem:
http://vimeo.com/34421326

This is a poem that many people find enchanting. I'm not one of them. If you are one of them, please stop reading now. There is too little enchantment in the world and I don't wish to disenchant you.

If you love this poem we can still be on friendly terms - but it is unlikely that we will ever be close friends or have very much in common. We could be nodding acquaintances, perhaps, or we could form a pact of mutual non-aggression. To me, this is a poem for people who in general do not like poetry.

The main reason I do not like it is that it is so monumentally stupid. It says nothing sincere, nothing worth hearing or knowing. Similar sentiments appear on any Valentine's Day card.

If you read any of my previous criticisms, you may have noticed that I get snotty with people who criticise venerable pieces saying, "To which particular defect in your nature do you attribute your lack of appreciation?" So I will tell you why I do not like it and let you see just how defective my nature is.

The first line might have been written by Edgar Allan Poe. Why should I be carrying your heart? Love poems are supposed to conjure up pleasant images. Not an image of a creepy man in a tube train with a sticky plastic bag.

Of course, there could be a benign reason why I might be carrying your heart: maybe it is needed for a transplant to save somebody's life. But whatever circumstances occasioned your heart to be removed from your body, none of them presage a happy outcome. I would rather your heart remained in your body pumping blood around to irrigate those parts that I find most interesting and like to play with.

Then the image "wherever you go, I go my darling" is an untenable intrusion on your personal privacy. There are some places I go that I would rather you did not go, and vice versa. I have never felt deprived by not having a Siamese twin. I prefer the separate status quo, heartwise and otherwise. There's a line that Crocodile Dundee sang, "If I give my heart to you, I'll have none and you'll have two."

Next there is "Whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling". I have always felt that people should take responsibility for their own actions. "She made me do it" is a defence I would never plead. If I do get caught, I promise I won't blame you.

Nor do I believe that you are my world. My world has things in it that are not you. I hope you want more things in your world than just me. Otherwise our worlds would be oppressive, cramped and indistinguishable. .

"I fear no fate" seems a foolish assertion. There are plenty of fates we should fear. Fear keeps us alive. Without fear we would do dangerous things like jumping off trains before they have stopped at the platform. Or not taking our vitamins.

Now, about you being what the moon means and the sun sings. These ideas are simply insane. I refuse to give them further consideration.

By definition, in the context, there is no such thing as a "secret nobody knows". For something to be a secret it is necessary for at least one person to know it.

I dispute the assertion that a root can have a root, or that a bud can have a bud, or that a sky can have a sky. If you allow such theoretical propositions then my nose can have a nose. And that nose, in its turn, can have a nose and so on ad infinitum, which is preposterous.

I am willing to admit that the tree has life, but actually calling a tree "Life" is confusing. There has to be a different name for the container from the names of the things it contains - or the theory behind naming things would be nonsense. And what would William Archibald Spooner make of a line containing "a soul can hope?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Archibald_Spooner

Next the speculation about what is keeping the stars apart. Any astrophysicist worthy of his Mensa lapel logo will tell you that the stars are getting further apart. And they have been doing so ever since the universe started with a Big Bang.

He'll also tell you that's why you see fuzzy lines on your TV screen when there's no transmission. (I've talked to them, they always tell me that. I am trying to think of a collective noun for a group of astrophysicists: a "constellation" perhaps?). If you ask an astrophysicist if the motivational force between stars is "love" or "wonder" the conversation will be brief. Maybe I'll try it next time I meet one.

People might say that I am taking this poem too literally - I can't think why. E E Cummings has poetic licence to use images but he should consider their literal meanings beforehand and ask himself if they are silly.

I carry your heart with me I carry it in my lunch box. Heh. Heh.

Category:

Entertainment

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• heart
• Cummings

[ffsf739]

I love your videos! Your voice seems to add even more depth to the poems you select! This and Baudelaire's "Vampire" are my favourites.

Hope one day you may record something by Sylvia Plath - that would be astonishing!

Anyway, thanks a lot for your wonderful contributions!

[SpokenVerse]

@ffsf739 Thanks for your kind words. I have read a couple of Sylvia Plath's poems. Put her name in the "search uploads" box over the videos on my channel page. Keep listening! All the best, Tom

[SovereignBeing]

u certainly have the voice for it, can we hear some Bryon or Donne.??

[SpokenVerse]

@SovereignBeing Yes, go to my channel page and you'll find Playlists for both Byron and Donne - or you can use the "search uploads" box.

[fifernickel]

thanks for posting this poem. i wouldn't say you read the poem too literally. i would say you don't know how to read a poem. that might come off as rude, but you obviously lack any appreciation for form, figurative language, imagination, etc. it's like you've never encountered a surrealist poem. you treat this poem as a series of assertions, but this is not a philosophical treatise. anyway, i don't have the space here to address your remarks fully.

[SpokenVerse]

@fifernickel No, do go on, you're doing so well. Your certitude is just what I need this morning. I wish I were as sure about anything I think.

I am already working on my appreciation of form and figurative language. My imagination is improving.

Do write me a philosophical treatise. I'm sure it would be amusing and diverting for all the other YouTubers who listen to my readings and read my insights - especially those who have a sense of humour.

All the best - Tom.

[mmbmbmbmb]

Do you relize how much attention you give this poem? You may not like it - but instead of simply disregarding it you write a whole essay (which I found utterly amusing!!!) To me poetry is art - and art is always perceived in many different ways. I don't think this poem 'claims' to be logical or make any sense for that matter.

It is what it is. Take it or leave it. No?

[MattFeenYT]

If you're the kind of person who posts a beloved poem and then erects a wall of critical buzzkill between it and its would-be listeners (complete with a crudely disingenuous disclaimer re disenchantment) in which you pedantically effect fake confusion about the meaning of the poem's metaphors (when the poem's/poet's abiding figurative rules are obvious, indeed famous) so as to distance yourself from its sentimentality and wedding-day popularity...we probably can't be friends.

[Rhea303]

These are lovely, lovely lines.

And yes, the poem has to maken 'sense' to one,

and sink deep into one's being. If it does nòt .. then indeed the words may sound strange.

Aspergers Syndrome, maybe?

[mahaLoLolo1]

I think that E.E. Cummings would have liked you for not liking his poem. I mean, it's just another form of art, and there'll always be appreciators. I think you take it too much at face value, too literally. It's more of a feeling poem. Which is weird, and not everyone gets it. But it's cool.

[GhibliGirl91]

Luckily poetry is one of those things you can give your own meaning to.

[katrinemalmgren7]

This is one of my favourite poems. It makes so much sense to me, and I have r it many times to my fiancé, to emphasize my love to him.