[r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r] ee cummings

I don’t know how he does it, but ee cummings always makes my heart bounce around in my ribcage like one of those rubber super-bouncy balls you buy at the entrance of a grocery store. Normally I read poetry out loud because it gets my brain more involved, but I savor cummings’ poetry internally. I really like that poems like “[r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r]” can’t be vocalized. Yet they somehow ring triumphantly in the ears of the soul.
In this poem, cummings uses his typewriter to give animation to a grasshopper. To some, this may look like alphabet soup and punctuation vomit. To me, every character on the page is evocative as hell. This is very difficult for me to explain in words. I’ll keep trying. I keep having giggle fits.
The first line is a scrambling of the word “grasshopper,” with each letter separated by a hyphen. This simulates, to me, a creature hopping from one space to the next, leaving behind clues of its footprints in no particular order. But it gets hoppier! The first line is indented to the right. The second line is more centered. The next two lines are on the left margin. The layout of the poem requires the reader’s eyes to literally hop from one line to the next in order to read it. This is whimsical brilliance--and really fun, too.
Then there is the unusual but evocative use of parentheses. “a)s w(e loo)k” (3). I can see at least two images in this line alone: 1. The body of a grasshopper: the “a” is its head, the “w” and “k” are legs, and the closed parentheses are its body segments. 2. The other image I see is binoculars. Binoculars make a fitting image because the line narrates the act of looking, which can be aided by binoculars. The form is functional to the theme in more than one way.
After line 3, the poem continues in a manner that is difficult for me to discern intellectually. The sentence is broken up in continuation of margin hopping and syntax scrambling. I am confused about what the poem actually says, but the feeling of it is so clear to me. cummings has an absolutely incredible ability to use words--and letters, punctuation, spacing, syntax, typography, or whatever you want to call it--on a heightened emotional level!
What is so fascinating about cummings’ way with words is that the “wordness” doesn’t interfere with the emotional impact. There is visual stimulation in the layout, as well as connotative exaltation in the individual words. A torrent of unnamable feelings is unleashed inside of me when I LOOK at this poem. I can’t tell you if the feelings are a natural part of me, or if they are manufactured by cummings. I don’t care, honestly. It is thrilling just to be swept up in it.