Spring+is+like+a+perhaps+hand

Austin Black, Jenny Cooke, Jack Feser, Sheela Gogula, and Ian Slauch

Diction


 * //Spring is like a perhaps hand// by E. E. Cummings**

Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere) arranging a window, into which people look (while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and from moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.


 * E. E. Cummings Biography**

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He grew up in a family that encouraged his budding creativity. In 1917, he published his first poems in the anthology, //Eight Harvard Poets//. In the same year he traveled to France to volunteer as an ambulance driver in World War I. After five months in France, he was imprisoned by French authorities for suspicions of anti-war convictions. These suspicions ended up being proved false.

His signature type of work was about love, war, satirical squibs, and descriptive nature poems. He did not use traditional techniques, instead, he created a new, highly individual means of poetic expression. He deliberately wrote his poems with a simplistic view of the world and often played with language and lyrical form. He also experimented with punctuation, form, spelling and sentence structure. Later on in his career, he was criticized for settling into his own personal style and not trying to further develop it. However, he still maintained a large fan base, filled especially with young readers because of his simplistic language and topics, such as sex and war.

During Cumming's lifetime he received many honors including an Academy of American Poets fellowship, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry and the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard. He died in September 3, 1962 and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time of his death, he was the second most read poet in the United States, behind Robert Frost.


 * History of the Poem**

//Spring is like a perhaps hand// was written in 1925. It was first available to the public in a book of poetry which was written and published by E. E. Cummings entitled //&.// During 1925, Cummings had been painting for //Vanity Fair// and had been contributing to //The Dial//, a prestigious American magazine of the time. The publication of his new poems marked the beginning of his new writing style, which included unconventional punctuation, capitalization and abnormal diction. Some say that Cummings' "grammatical anarchism" was a contemporary continuation of romanticism and was a result of his hostile feelings towards society and desire to write in new ways about old topics.

(which comes in from nowhere) and arranges a picture, which people stare at while people stare, it changes things very carefully placing new things and moving old things
 * **Paraphrase** || **Poetic Structures** ||
 * spring is maybe like a hand

very carefully

spring is maybe like a hand in the picture (carefully moving new and old things, while people are looking intently changing maybe just a tiny bit of a flower or putting a bit of air someplace and

without breaking anything. || //Spring is like a perhaps hand// is composed in a stanza-line-stanza-line pattern and has no rhyme scheme. There is no punctuation at the end of lines Instead Cumming's continues sentences through lines. This makes the poem more confusing and it does not flow as well. The absence of end punctuation also makes the poem harder to read because it is hard to tell where to pause. The absence of a stress pattern also adds to the difficulty. It is made more confusing because there are two lines that are by themselves, even though it would make sense to put them with the stanzas that precede them. This is typical of Cummings, who experimented with punctuation, form and sentence structure during his lifetime. ||


 * Poetic Devices**

- Spring is like a perhaps hand compares spring to a hand using the word "like". By using the word "like", the author shows how spring can be like a hand and change things in nature and in the world carefully. - The poet creates an image of people looking into a window and watching the changes that spring brings. - Cummings makes spring seem like a person who can alter and change things carefully. He adds human traits to spring by saying that it is like a hand that can change the air and the flowers while people watch. __**Repetition:**__ The repeating of words, phrases, lines or stanzas. - The words spring, changing and carefully come up often in the poem. These words are used to describe how spring acts upon the world. Cummings uses changing and carefully to add emphasis on the manner in which spring changes things. __**Enjambment:**__ The continuation of a thought from one line of poetry to the next without using punctuation at the end of the previous line. - Cummings writes without using punctuation at the end of each line. Instead he continues the phrase on the next line, which does not give the poem any recognizable meter and changes the way in which it it read.
 * Simile:** A comparison between two objects using the words "like" or "as"
 * Imagery:** A group of words or phrases that are used to create a mental picture
 * Personification:** Giving human traits or abilities to non-human things


 * Breakdown and Analysis**

//Spring is like a perhaps hand// depicts, through obvious imagery, spring as an abstract object that can change the landscape people look at. But, through deeper metaphors, also shows that spring changes people's outlook on life and that spring can change things completely and unexpectedly.

//Spring is like a perhaps hand// gives some obvious imagery and deeper metaphors. The imagery comes from the lines "arranging a window...thing here". These lines put a picture in your mind of spring as an abstract object, or a hand, putting items in place for people to see because the lines literally say that spring moves objects. Even though the wording in the poem is out of order, the image is still clear. Imagery also comes from the lines "spring is like a perhaps Hand...stare carefully". These lines are much like the first lines as they also give an image of spring as an abstract hand that arranges objects in a window. But additionally, they describe the movement of new objects coming in and old objects leaving while people stare. This gives the sense that spring is transforming something from old to new.

The more significant metaphors are buried within the imagery of the poem and some occur more than once in the poem. Since spring is not a hand, or anything physical that could have physical characteristics, describing spring as a hand give spring all of the characteristics of the hand. The hand moves objects: spring moves objects. Using this, it is possible to find the important information in the poem: how spring changes objects. The poem describes how spring comes "carefully out of Nowhere" before changing anything. The Nowhere could easily be winter, seeing as winter is blank and barren and every year, spring arrives after winter. This would mean that spring replaces winter in the picture of nature people see because spring would be "arranging a window into which people look" that is different than the picture of winter. But, the poem also describes multiple times spring as changing things carefully, such as when it says "arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing". Putting these two ideas together, it can be assumed that spring comes from winter and makes slight and deliberate changes that ultimately change the landscape from one that is barren to one that is fertile. The words "strange thing" and "known thing" are similar to the New and Old used in the second stanza and describe Spring's introduction of new objects into the world from the old and grey Winter. The overuse of the word "carefully" and descriptions of Spring's carefulness, especially in the second stanza, is a metaphor to how precise, accurate, and deliberate Spring is in its movement. Spring moves a picture while people look at it and doesn't break anything and changes it so slowly that nobody notices it, it just blends in. The imagery in the lines "moving perhaps a fraction of a flower here placing and inch of air there" especially convey Spring's slow motion.

However, the metaphors in the poem may go deeper than that. The poem makes multiple references to people looking into windows or at pictures. Spring is changing the things into which people look. It can be inferred that spring is not simply changing the landscape, but, because of the imagery of windows and pictures in the poem, also people's outlooks on life. Spring comes from winter and slowly changes a person's outlook on life. Winter is cold and miserable, but spring is green and full of life. Everybody feels better and is happier when spring comes around. This can be extended to not only spring changing the seasons, but also to more general changes for the better that affect your perception of the world, such as having a child, because the spring mentioned in the poem can be equated with happiness.

The 'Nowhere' in the poem could also easily be replaced with 'for no good reason' and, combined with a new metaphor, creates more conclusions to be drawn. The new metaphor is the one presented in the lines "arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here" and "carefully to and from moving New and Old things". These lines use new and old as well as strange and known, which refer to the types of things that spring is changing. Spring always takes away something old or known and replaces it with something new or strange. This metaphor works well with the other simple metaphor in the poem that spring just replaces winter gradually. But it can also work when Nowhere is changed to 'for no good reason', because, if the changes come 'for no good reason', then they could happen anytime. From this, it can be inferred that spring makes unexpected changes that completely alter the status quo by the time the change is finished, due to the contrasts between the old and known and the new and strange objects and the fact that the changes arise from Nowhere 'for no good reason'.

In the poem //Spring is like a perhaps hand//, the obvious imagery shows that spring is a hand which moves objects in a window. But, there are also deeper metaphors that describe spring's relationship with the way people think. In particular, spring can cause slow changes in people's outlook on life, either through the changing from winter to spring, or more generally through events that inspire joy. Additionally, the poem implies that spring-like changes can occur unexpectedly and can completely shift what they affect.

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