l(a

l(a

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

ee cummings


Edward Estlin Cummings was a controversial poet during his time. He opted to write his name all in lower case letters and without using periods (i.e. ee cummings). For him, punctuation marks and any capitalization whatsoever means something else in his poetry. He is a recognized poet due the the unusual layout of his poems. His reason could be that he has some special purposes for making his poem unique. The layout of his poems could represent something that Cummings wanted to mean.

In the poem l(a, you could look at its construction and decipher what Cummings wanted to say. When you omit the line breaks, you would end up with this: l(a leaf falls)oneliness, and when you omit the phrase in the parentheses, a familiar word is recognized – LONELINESS.

One explanation of this poem could be that the phrase is inside the parentheses is an case of loneliness. It is already known that any plant or tree really has a lot of leaves. Whatever species a plant is, its leaves would be in groups or in bunches. When one leaf falls, it would be removed from its group. The fallen leaf's state would be loneliness.

The group of leaves represents a community and each leaf represents one individual within the community. When a leaf falls, it departs from its community or it is taken away from the community by a force. One example of a departure is when a family member (e.g. a mother) goes abroad in order to gain more money for her family. That leaf would really feel lonely because of the withdrawal from her family. An example of a forced departure is death. When a person dies, he is taken away from his family. And if there is really an after life, he would definitely feel lonely due to his state of removal from his loved ones (I am currently in deep self-reflection if I really believe that there is an after life).

Indeed, the analysis of this poem is really hard because Cummings would give special meanings to the style of his poetry. One has to dig deep to find the inner meaning of his works.

As what I have already said, the phrase ‘a leaf falls’ is an example of loneliness. There must be a reason the Cummings used this as a case of loneliness. I wonder what it could be. Since Cummings is fond of using the ambiguity of the letter ‘L’ in the typewriter, maybe he also played with the 2 definition of the word ‘leaves’. Leaves could be the plural form of leaf or a singular present tense of the word leave. Cummings might have used this in his poem of have a multiple function. Poetry really is beautiful because of the hidden messages.

If you look at the layout of the poem, you may be able to see this:

A half-arrow may be drawn on the poem's layout.

An explanation of this is simple. As what I have stated above, a person may be withdrawn from the community. A person when humiliated maybe turned away by the community. This leaf would fall down. This diagram could explain what happens to a person when humiliated (a leaf falling down).

You could see that in the upper part, 'l(a' is the form of the person when he is still on the top. 'iness' is the form of the person when humiliated. The wider 'iness' shows the disintegration of the dignity of the person.

A poem can be interpreted in numerous ways. I found Cummings’ poem really beautiful because of its multiple purposes of each elements of his poem. I can’t believe that a poem that short contains a lot of meaning.