e e cummings

I admit it--I love this man with all of my heart and soul. He embodies all things beautiful in the English language. Unlike most English lovers, I am an advocate for grammar experimentation, particularly through punctuation, much like that for which my friend Edward Estlin is often acknowledged. Here are a few of my favourite bits from his poems:

* and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

* every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

* what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May

* why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid

* since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things

* for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

* down above all with love
and everything perverse
or which makes some feel more better
when all ought to feel less worse

* may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know

* I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

* deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

* eyes
know if a
lit tle
tree listens

* i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

That's just the ones I have on me. God, his words and his lack of words are just...utter bliss.