Saturday, January 10, 2015

In "since feeling is first" what is the love metaphor cummings is referring to? Is there more than one?

In "since feeling is first," a love poem, e.e. cummings
uses the metaphor of punctuation to describe his feelings.  At the very end of the poem,
he states, "for life's not a paragraph/and death I think is no parentheses."  These
metaphors lend themselves to many in-depth interpretations.  For life is not a
paragraph, that could mean that life is not a short summary of things; a paragraph is
too concise and tiny to hold all that life has.  A paragraph is limited; it can only
relate so much information.  Life is not like that--it is entirely, overwhelmingly
full.  As he states above, even "your eyelids' flutter" has so much beauty in it that he
could go on and on about it for quite some time.  Add that to all else that life offers,
and indeed, a paragraph does not suffice.  Paragraphs also follow an order, a specific
format, and life is not that predictable.


Life, in this
poem, can be replaced with love--cummings uses them interchangably as far as meaning
goes.  So, everything that I stated above about life, can also be applied to love.  That
is the metaphor for love in this poem.  If you look at who he is talking to, (he
addresses "lady" in the poem) and how he focuses on kisses, and her eyelids, you can
conclude that the life he is referring to is the love he feels for her.  To clarify--the
metaphor for life and love in this poem is that love is not a parentheses.  Another
possible metaphor for love is Spring (he says that when Spring is in the world, all else
is wonderful.)  Comparing it to flowers is an off-shoot of that spring metaphor. I hope
that helped; good luck!

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