Essay - Poetry Criticism Love as a Transforming Force in Cumming's 'Somewhere...

poetry criticism

Love as a Transforming Force in Cumm*****g's "somewhere i have never traveled"

E. E. Cummings's poem cogently depicts the experience of love and union between two people. The text makes use of a particular set of metaphors and specific imagery to deliver its message. ***** focal point ***** the poem is thus the metaphor of a flower th*****t successively opens ***** closes its petals, an image which is reiterated throughout the five stanzas of the text, acquiring ***** multiple meanings. The closure-opening ***** describes thus a sort ***** ***** mech*****nism that acts on the self of ***** poet as a transforming and metamorphosing force, able to modify perpetually the state in which his soul is. This depiction of love is original ***** significant because it reveals love ***** be one of the pulsating *****s of life,

First of all, love ***** apt to transform ***** self and to penetrate into its innermost recesses. The woman lover to whom the poem is addressed as well as love it***** are seen as agents or mysterious forces. The first line hints at a displacement ***** the self through a miraculous, previously unknown ***** or sensation: "somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any exper*****ence." The idea of a journey ***** the unknown suggests ***** overpowering and new sensations brought by the intrusion ***** love into the ********** *****. The next two lines emph*****ize powerful mastery of love, which is able to 'enclose' or entrap the poet's *****: "in your most frail gesture ***** things which enclose me, /or ***** i cannot *****uch ***** they are too near." The verb 'to enclose' suggests the mysterious force of ***** which ***** the poet a pris*****r, in spite of the frailty of ***** woman lover. Here, the closure refers to the sensation ***** being caught or entrapped ***** the meshes of love.

Also, love has a life *****nd death power over the self of the poet, as the *****s ***** spring and winter imply. A great part of ***** meaning ***** the poem rests in the intended oppositions between ***** frailty of the woman the ***** loves ***** the limitless power she casts over him, with which ***** can miraculously open and close him, as spring opens and closes its flowers. In the traditional love poetry, the woman is ********** comp*****d ***** a rose ***** another flower, because of her beauty or delicacy. *****, Cummings employs this metaph***** to describe his own self, which reacts to every gesture or look from his beloved as the flowers react ***** the changing seasons: "your slightest look easily will unclose me / though i have closed myself as fingers, / you open always petal by petal ***** as Spring opens /(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her ***** rose." The comparison of love ***** the ***** illustrates the supre***** force that ***** beloved one is endowed with. The relation between spring ***** the flowers reflects the capacity that love has to unfold the self or to tear it open. *****