poems written in the style of e. e. cummings

For the past month my Poetry Sisters and I have been working on writing poems modeled after poems written by e. e. cummings. He is one of my favorite poets, so when we were throwing around names trying to chose a focus for our work I was delighted when everyone jumped on his. Something about his mix of irreverent, unconventional diction and grammar built on top of an exceptionally sharp wit and keen insight just floors me.

Each of us have chosen a poem to echo, or riff off of in writing our own versions. We've played with his signature style features like making up words, throwing punctuation and capitalization around like mad geniuses, and touching painful topics with the delicacy of a surgeon's knife. It's been exhausting and exhilarating work! Just to make it more frightening we decided to go ahead and record ourselves reading our poems, and post that along with the text. Someone (I can't remember who...) mentioned that she enjoyed hearing e. e. read his own works, and things went on from there. But oh! it is so cool to hear my Poetry Sister's voices reading their own work! We even made a little group on Soundcloud so we can follow each other and continue to share... if we like, of course. No pressure. You could do it too, with your poems!

So, the poems. I chose one of my favorite poems to work from, which you can read here, and also enjoy here how Kelly R. Fineman enlightens us about the structure and beauty of how it's put together. I didn't realize it when I chose it, but it's actually a sonnet with broken lines and some half rhymes. I'll just give you the first stanza here so you see how it begins...

a wind has blown the rain away and blown

the sky away and all the leaves away,

and the trees stand.  I think i too have known

autumn too long
                  (and what have you to say,...

..........................................-e. e. cummings

It was first published in 1923 in the volume Tulips and Chimneys, in the section subtitled "sonnets - unrealities".

Here is my poem, echoing that style:

a wind has blown the flag away and blown

the sky away and all the words away,

and the pole stands. I think we too have known

autumn too long

                (and what have you to say,

talking, texting, sharing,

liking, liking, liking -   did you love somebody

and have you a bullet somewhere in your heart

shot from some dumb winter?

                                          Oh crazy daddy

of death dance cruelly for us or start

the last flag flying in the world brain

of net!) Let us as we have seen see

doom’s deliverance ………...a wind has blown the stain

away and the sky away and the

pole stands:

                      the pole stands. The pole

suddenly waits, flying an empty soul.

                -Andromeda Jazmon

Listen to it read by me, recorded on Soundcloud:



And here are links to my Poetry Sister's poems:

Sara Lewis Holmes writing in the style of "in just spring"
Trisha Stohr Hunt writing in the style of "silence"
Liz Garton Scanlon writing in the style of "i like my body when it is with your"
Tanita S. Davis writing in the style of "The Cambridge Ladies Who Live In Furnished Souls"

Kelly R. Fineman writing in the style of "maggie and milly and molly and may"

Laura Purdie Salas writing in the style of "Spring is like a perhaps hand"

Listen to all of us reading our poems at the Soundcloud group "Poetry Sisters".


Also make sure you go visit the Friday Poetry roundup at The Logonauts!