"Since Feeling Is First"

Paper Summary:

This paper contends that the poem "Since Feeling Is First" by e.e. cummings seems to be about love and how much it determines what we do in life. It looks at how the poem illustrates the splendor of love in our lives and how life in the poem seems to be represented to the reader as a formality. Even though most consider death to be the end, it appears that e.e. cummings sees it as a beginning.

From the Paper:

"This poem's speaker could be "the man" in love who is trying to convince "his lover" that the flow of time is immaterial and that when you first feel something for someone, everything afterwards occurs at the same time. He explains to his love that there is no "syntax" or order or sense to our feelings and that if you attempt to make sense of it, (.... will never wholly kiss you; line 4) you will miss out on it. This could in fact be a simile that life itself is like an unstructured paragraph that has run-on sentences, mistakes, incorrect syntax and sometimes no punctuation at all. We witness the word "wholly"(lines 4 & 5) repeated twice in the poem, and in my opinion it's used to emphasize how a person must completely give himself over to the feelings being felt in order to entirely live moment without it being overly structured. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• How to read poetry. May 8, 2007. March 2, 2008 <http://www.uwm.edu/People/jpebert/cummings.html.>
• "E. E. Cummings." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 23 Feb 2008, 00:18 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 17 Mar 2008. Feb. 10, 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E._E._Cummings&oldid=193388344>.

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