[Student Name]

Mr. Deal
DE English, [Block #]
[Day Month] 2022

[as freedom is a breakfastfood]

—e.e. cummings
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame
 
as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
—long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung
 
or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common’s rare and millstones float
—long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late
 
worms are the words but joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
 Poem Explication or Rhetorical Analysis: “[as freedom is a breakfastfood]”

What strikes me about the work of e.e. cummings in general, and this poem in particular,

is that the poet takes everything that we as students of literature and writing have been taught, or

think we know, and he turns every convention on its head. In a sense, reading his poems is

tantamount to experiencing a Dali painting: Cummings, like Dali, is surreal. Dali melts clocks

and faces and clockfaces in his work. Cummings melts semantics and syntax and mechanics, all

the things that writers, including most poets, rely on to communicate ideas clearly, persuasively,

appealingly.

Regarding Cummings' semantic acrobatics, consider the line, "will being pay the rent of

seem" (l. 5). Here, "being" must mean ‘existence’ since it seems to function as the subject of the

verb "pay," and "seem," as the object of a preposition, must be a ‘thing’—a noun, that is, and not

a verb. In the same stanza (on l. 6), Cummings uses a made-up word "talentgang," which sounds

kind of Germanic, and thus, in the fashion of the surrealist, he melts or melds two otherwise

common words together to create something new.

These sort of confabulations, or turnings of phrases and novel uses of diction, force the

reader to perform mental gymnastics to keep up with the speaker's meaning. That is,

understanding or appreciating Cummings' poem requires leaps of faith, which also depend on a

healthy appetite for irony. For example, the line "molehills are from mountains made" (l. 3) turns

on its head a common expression and, thus, derives its significance through irony. In addition to

the irony here, the line is made all the more appealing through its musical cadence, created by

alliteration.

The cumulative effect of Cummings' flouting of conventional semantics, syntax, and

mechanics is a style that is, curiously, intriguing and energizing and playful and sexy:

"but love is the sky and I am for you/

just so long and long enough."