Ee Cummings Play With Language

How Cummings’ Play with Language Transforms from Nonsensical to Meaningful

E.E Cummings’ poem, “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” is written in free verse and has fifteen lines. It is captivating right from its title that is hardly pronounceable. At a first glance at the poem, the reader sees a spacious poem with lines as short as an alphabet arranged in an irregular pattern on the page. Cummings’ writing of the poem makes it seem nonsensical to the reader , at first, and also creates a curiosity to discover the meaning of the poem, if it has any. Cummings uses punctuations unusually, joins words together, separates words and joins letters together in a way that seems insensible. However, his unusual use of punctuation and the arrangement of words

The poem starts in the first stanza, “ r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” with a combination of letters that is nonsensical, at first, but gradually becomes meaningful as the poem progresses. The combination of letters in the first line is repeated many times in the poem. At first, the letters are hyphenated, “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r.” Then in the fifth line, “PPEGORHRASS,” the combination of letters is cohesive, but all the letters are in capital. The first letter of the first word in a sentence, which is sometimes the subject of the sentence or precedes the subject, and the first letter of proper nouns are usually capitalized. The capitalization in the fifth line could indicate that the combination of letters,“PPEGORHRASS,” makes up a word that is a proper noun and is the main subject of the poem. More pronounced is the fact that this combination of letters is made of phonemes which make it pronounceable as opposed to the first line. Before the final development into its most sensible form, the combination of letters is seen again in the twelfth stanza, “.gRrEaPsPhOs).” The letters

The third stanza , “ a)s w(e loo)k,” has a closing brackets after “a”without an opening bracket, then an opening bracket in the middle of the word “we” and a closing bracket before the last letter in “look.” The words inside a bracket usually express the same idea and are connected. Brackets also separate the enclosed word or words from the preceding words in the sentence. The use of brackets to enclose “e loo” suggests that they are connected, though the letter “e” does not seem connected directly to “ loo .” However, “e” is part of the subject “we” while “loo” is part of the verb look. The bracket indicates that the subject, who is the “doer” of the action , is related to the action performed. This is true as people’s actions usually have effects on them, and an action cannot be performed without the performer. Cummings also uses brackets in the fourteenth line, “rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly” to separate “rearrangingly” and “become.” While “rearrangingly” and “become” are connected , since they are woven into each other as one word, the brackets separate them to distinguish the two words. Cummings’ use of brackets may seem incorrect, but his use of brackets and the meaning it conveys highlight their function. Cummings’ play with punctuation is also seen in the first line , “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” where he uses hyphens between each letter. An hyphen is used to join a