Poems for the ear

E.E. Cummings

Ursula K. Le Guin makes an interesting distinction between eye-poems and heard poems. Some poems are best read with our own eyes and at our own pace. We may need to reread them again and again to begin to understand them. Their very appearance on the page offers clues to their meaning. Other poems, especially those that rhyme, are heard poems, those written to be recited or read aloud, perhaps to groups of people.

Le Guin, in an essay in Words Are My Matter, specifically mentions E.E. Cummings as a poet famous for his eye-poems. These poems are best read and appreciated silently, not just because they are difficult and sometimes totally incomprehensible, but also because of the way Cummings arranged the words on the page. Noticing the placement of the words helps us interpret the poem.

I first encountered Cummings in a fine arts class as a college freshman. The poem was Just spring, which ends like this:

it's

spring

and

    the

        

        goat-footed

ballonMan           whistles

far

and

wee

The textbook author noted that the phrase "whistles far and wee" appears three times in the poem, and each time the words are placed closer together, suggesting that the little lame balloonman is getting nearer to the children at play on this first day of spring. The linking of names — "bettyandisbel" — hints at their excitement. This particular Cummings poem is actually fun to read aloud, with words like mudluscious and puddle-wonderful, but its meaning comes through more clearly as an eye-poem.

Le Guin says that eye-poems — and most poetry written today can probably be considered eye-poems — are "offshoots, technologically enabled derivatives of the heard poem." That must surely be true because poetry existed long before there was a printing press. Poetry was meant to be recited, to be heard and appreciated by groups of people. Heard poems can more easily be turned into music.

Heard poems seem to be frowned upon today in literary circles. They must remind modern poets too much of Casey at the Bat, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, children's nursery rhymes, moon and June, and Robert Frost. Some places still do have poetry readings. I just hope some of these performing poets dare sometimes to please their audience with a poem that actually rhymes.