Puella Mea

Last updated

Puella Mea is a poem by E. E. Cummings. It is notable as his longest poem, at 290 lines. The title is Latin and translates as "My Girl", referring to Elaine Orr Thayer, his first wife, and the mother of his only child, Nancy Thayer Andrews. [1] Von Abele considers the poem to be a departure point for the poet from the "witty romanticism" of his early works. [2]

Contents

Puella Mea, a very early [3] Cummings poem, was first published in the January 1921 issue of The Dial , and then in Tulips and Chimneys , Cummings' first collection of poetry. In 1949 it was published as a separate book by Golden Eagle Press. The book featured illustrations by Cummings, Paul Klee, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and Kurt Roesch. [1]

Title and content

The title refers to Catullus 3 that reiterates the words in a less conventional order (meae puellae). The change of word order possibly signifies a distant recollection or is simply an attempt to make the title "more Latin", [3] adding "a certain air of elegance" that is missing in the more boring "My Girl". [4] The poem does not sound at all like Catullus; Baker characterizes it as a blend of Romance and the Song of Solomon, pointing, however, to the line "Eater of all things lovely – Time!" that mimics line 14 of Catullus 3 while substituting Time for Catullus' "Shades of Orcus." [3]

The poem highlights the contrast between the living beauty of Cummings' lady and the now-dead female ideals of the writers of the times past. [5] First four lines sum up the remaining text: [6]

Harun Omar and Master Hafiz
keep your dead beautiful ladies.
Mine is a little lovelier
than any of your ladies were

Criticism

Breen suggests that, excluding the overabundance of "concrete sensuousness of physical detail", there is little to note in this "juvenile in theme" poem. [7] Von Abele, on the contrary, describes the poem as "a delightful piece" where historical allusions to Salome, Tristram, Bagdad,[ clarification needed ] Chaucer and Semiramis maintain the distance between the physical body of the girl being praised and the reader, with the latter prevented from visualizing the core of the presentation, [2]

... her large and shapely thighs
in whose dome the trembling bliss
of a kingdom wholly is ...

through the use of "playful euphuism", commonly found in the English love poetry. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus</span> Latin poet of the late Roman Republic (c.84–c.54 BCE)

Gaius Valerius Catullus, often referred to simply as Catullus, was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His surviving works are still read widely and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. E. Cummings</span> American author (1894–1962)

Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. Cummings is associated with modernist free-form poetry. Much of his work has idiosyncratic syntax and uses lower-case spellings for poetic expression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Callimachus</span> 3rd-century BC Greek poet, scholar and librarian

Callimachus was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variety of genres, most of which did not survive. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature.

An epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This form continued in popularity through the history of the classical world; the Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous epithalamium, which was translated from or at least inspired by a now-lost work of Sappho. According to Origen, the Song of Songs might be an epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter.

The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. From the 1880s to 1919 it was revived as a political review and literary criticism magazine. From 1920 to 1929 it was an influential outlet for modernist literature in English.

<i>Tulips and Chimneys</i> 1923 collection of poetry

Tulips and Chimneys is the first collection of poetry by E. E. Cummings, published in 1923.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbia</span> Lover of the Roman poet Catullus

Lesbia was the literary pseudonym used by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus to refer to his lover. Lesbia is traditionally identified with Clodia, the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer and sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher; her conduct and motives are maligned in Cicero's extant speech Pro Caelio, delivered in 56 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus 3</span> Poem by 1st-century BC Roman poet Catullus

Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus that laments the death of a pet sparrow (passer) for which an unnamed girl (puella), possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia, had an affection. Written in hendecasyllabic meter, it is considered to be one of the most famous of Latin poems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus 2</span> Poem by 1st-century BC Roman poet Catullus

Catullus 2 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BCE) that describes the affectionate relationship between an unnamed puella ('girl', possibly Catullus' lover, Lesbia), and her pet sparrow. As scholar and poet John Swinnerton Phillimore has noted, "The charm of this poem, blurred as it is by a corrupt manuscript tradition, has made it one of the most famous in Catullus' book." The meter of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus' poetry.

Catullus 101 is an elegiac poem written by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus. It is addressed to Catullus' dead brother or, strictly speaking, to the "mute ashes" which are the only remaining evidence of his brother's body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus 8</span> Latin poem by Catullus

Catullus 8 is a Latin poem of nineteen lines in choliambic metre by the Roman poet Catullus, known by its incipit, Miser Catulle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry of Catullus</span> Poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus was written towards the end of the Roman Republic

The poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus was written towards the end of the Roman Republic. It describes the lifestyle of the poet and his friends, as well as, most famously, his love for the woman he calls Lesbia.

Catullus 16 or Carmen 16 is a poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus. The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) meter, was considered to be so sexually explicit following its rediscovery in the following centuries that a full English translation was not published until the 20th century. The first line, Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō, sometimes used as a title, has been called "one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin—or in any other language".

Sappho 31 is an archaic Greek lyric poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as phainetai moi after the opening words of its first line. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman.

James Albert Lindon was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specialising in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midnight poem</span> Poem possibly written by Sappho

The midnight poem is a fragment of Greek lyric poetry preserved by Hephaestion. It is possibly by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, and is fragment 168 B in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of her works. It is also sometimes known as PMG fr. adesp. 976 – that is, fragment 976 from Denys Page's Poetae Melici Graeci, not attributed to any author. The poem, four lines describing a woman alone at night, is one of the best-known surviving pieces of Greek lyric poetry. Long thought to have been composed by Sappho, it is one of the most frequently translated and adapted of the works ascribed to her.

Robyn Bolam, formerly known as Marion Lomax, is an English poet, editor, and librettist. She writes about topics such as love and loss, about surviving under difficult situations, and about changes within the natural world and in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Since feeling is first</span> 1926 poem by E. E. Cummings

"since feeling is first" is a poem written by E. E. Cummings. The poem was first published in 1926 in Is 5, a collection of poems published by Boni and Liveright, and, like most Cummings poems, is referred to by its first line. In the collection, the poem is labeled Four VI. The poem is written in Cummings's characteristic style, which lacks traditional orthography and punctuation.

Him is a three-act play written by poet E.E. Cummings. The play was first published in November 1927 and premiered in New York during the spring of 1928. Him is sometimes called a precursor to Theatre of the Absurd but has also been described as being surrealistic and in the German expressionist tradition. It is heavily influenced by Freudian psychology as well as popular culture of the 1920s.

References

  1. 1 2 Ordeman & Firmage 2000, p. 167.
  2. 1 2 3 Von Abele 1955, p. 926.
  3. 1 2 3 Baker 1959, p. 233.
  4. ↑ Breen 1958, p. 280.
  5. ↑ Buck 2011, p. 138.
  6. ↑ Breen 1958, p. 279.
  7. ↑ Breen 1958, pp. 279–280.

Sources


Quill and ink.svg

This article related to a poem from the 1920s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.