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i carry your heart by ee cummings - Coggle Diagram
i carry your heart
by ee cummings
Context
1894 - 1962
'I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms
that love is mystery of mysteries.'
Esoteric American poet, playwright and essayist.
Experimental in modernist free-form poetry/
used poem as visual.
Ignored conventions of punctuation and syntax,
favoured lowercase letters to focus readers and concentrate his message.
Punctuation distracts.
Married twice but longest relationship with Marion Morehouse, lasted 30 years, until his death in 1962.
Themes
Power of true love.
Experience of self.
Individualism.
Mortality.
Voice
Personal perspective —
speaker presumable voicing
feelings of Cummings.
Form
Elegy.
Visual representation.
Structure
Versification
'i fear'
Unusual positioning of strong statement.
Reinforces speaker's conviction.
Usually associated with negative feelings and a lack of power, but here, it deliberately exaggerates the indentation to show that he can conquer fear — enables him to push fear.
Rhyme
Examples
In, done, darling.
Bud, hide.
Want, meant.
Apart, heart.
Shows connection, close enough to show tightness,
even if they aren't true rhymes. Internal rhymes.
Examples
You, true.
Masculine rhyme stands
out amongst slant rhymes.
Rhythm
Cadence flows, works in harmony.
Makes speaker's declaration seem strong, heartfelt, determined.
Natural rhythm: I carry your heart.
Iambic pentameter: di, dum, di, dum.
Absolute resolute in love.
Enjambment
Doesn't want to stop talking.
Forceful driving pace.
Fast movement supports idea that speaker is deeply, wholeheartedly, in love.
Imply eager and excited mood.
Can't contain his overwhelming passion.
Juxtaposition
Abstract and concrete images.
Help speaker to stress the message that his
relationship is extraordinary.
Parenthesis
Brackets
Supposedly contain throwaway info but it's just as important.
Deliberayely calling attention to it.
Ambiguity.
Represent containment: convey protection.
One lover embodied in another, together, they merge into one.
Aural Imagery
Assonance
Beautiful, you, true, moon.
Nobody knows ('ohh' sound, blows your mind effect).
Soul, hope (sense of awww, woah!)
Cooing over her.
Alliteration
Dear, done, doing, darling.
Repitition of strong 'd' sounds reinforces...
Fate, for, fear (soft).
More affectionate tone created through the gentle alternative.
Sun, sing, secret, always, knows (consonance).
Sibilance
lingering, soft sibilance.
creates the impression that speaker is whispering
to us as he shares his secret of live, mysterious.
Metaphor
'root of the root'
secret nestled in parenthesis, buried.
truth and love can't be seen, studied,
it can only be felt and experienced.
contect: 1920 lecture, Cummings proudly states that 'I'm someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries'.
'wonder... stars apart'
suggests incredible strength of love by comparison to a cosmic force, something immeasurable, something to be marvelled at, something to complete to be understood.
Personification
'soul can actually hope'
don't want to share the secret
because it's so special.