Is 5

Now, I usually don't read a book of poems straight. I tend to pick them up randomly and read a poem from a random page. But for whatever reason I wanted to read this one through.

I am a big fan of e e cummings. I find his poetry to be beautiful, sensual, and alluring. In college I always chose his poems to read for class.

Some of the poems in Is 5 were a little lost on me, but I'm not too worried about it. Maybe in five years I'll reread them and be able to see just what cummings is saying. Cummings is known for his free style, words scattered across the page, phrases thrown together seemingly at random to create the perfect image in your mind. He writes about love and war, and eschews the normal rules of punctuation. The above poem is not in Is 5, but I thought it was a good example of how playful cummings' poetry can be.

Several poems jumped out at me in this book. "my sweet old etcetera" has always been one of my favorites. I had a poetry class and that was the only cummings poem in the text book.

I do want to include one poem from the book. This one stood out to me as special. I've heard the "eyelids' fluttering" line before and love it even more in context. Enjoy!

VII

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

-the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other:then

laugh,leaning back in my arms

for life's no a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis