E.E. Cummings Form & Meaning

I really enjoyed the selected poems by E.E. Cummings that we were assigned to read. Not to sound like a freak or anything, but I love to read sex poems (especially when they’re tasteful). In my opinion, Cummings is the great at doing this—that is, writing poems that are overtly sexual but not quite Playboy or King Pen poems.

E. E. Cummings’ use of form in these poems definitely adds to the meaning of them—specifically the hypersexual tones in them. In “She Being Brand” Cummings divides his stanzas in a way that reflects the speed of the actions in the poem. For example, if he is describing something that is happening at a slower pace, he places that section of the poem in a single line, thus forcing the reader to actually slow down in reading the poem. This extraction of the poem illustrates this.

“slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slow-ly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-oh and her gears being inA 1 shape passed
from low throughsecond-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity.”

Cummings also uses form in “I Like My Body When it is with Yours” in order to add to the meaning of the poem. The final two lines being separated from the rest of the poem really emphasizes the point that this is definitely about having enjoying the sexual company of the poem’s subject. When reading this aloud, the breaks also make the reader slow down in reading, thus also hinting at the sexual context of his words. The bulk of the poem is a relatively subtle expression of how wonderful the speaker feels when his body is with the subject’s body and this is all in one stanza with no breaks. The final two lines are separated with breaks, reading “and possibly I like the thrill/ of under me you so quite new,” causing the reader to speak slower and put emphasis on the sexual climax of the poem.