Archibald MacLeish famously declared in a poem full of meaning that “A poem should not mean/ But be.” The poems of E. E. Cummings commingle meaning and being in one—and none more concretely so than “l (a.” This poem, like most of the Cummings’ other poems, exists, quite meaningfully exists, in both form and content. Indeed, the form both encapsulates and expounds the meaning of the poem.
The vision of the poem on the page is a vision that will linger in the minds of readers, turning them into not merely gentle readers but active participant spectators in a multi-sensual experience. Any written discussion of the experience should necessarily be enriched by the sight of this miniature monument in verse, which is reproduced below:
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
The stark meaning of the word ‘loneliness’ cannot be spelled out and illustrated more precisely, more exactly, and more accurately than this and with as much authenticity—with such genuine being and meaning.
This is accomplished, first, by the visual form of the content of the poem on the page, arranged by the poet to simulate the shape of a tree, with falling leaves, and with a cluster of fallen leaves at its base. Is there anything in the world as symbolic and expressive of loneliness as the image of a leaf falling from a tree? One moment it had been a vital part of the whole congregation of leaves that make up the living wonder that is the tree—and as that very moment falls into the garbage bin of time past, the dying leaf falls from the rest to rest alone and quite apart from the bed of rotten and rotting leaves at the foot of the tree, before it too becomes rotten and forgotten.
A poem exists not merely in the form or shape of words on a page—it has an auditory appeal too. If the protoplasm of this written paper could take on the hyper-reality of hypertext, it would have, nay, it should have forged a link with a reading of the poem by the poet or by some equally gifted speaker of the poem. The supreme power of human imagination can, however, remedy that all and other wants, and even if one were to listen to the sound of the poem with the ear of imagination alone, one could surely hear in the silence of the soul the sound of the letters that make up the bitter-sweet word ‘loneliness’ and the measured enunciation of the phrase “a le af f all s” which, as noted earlier, is the perfect illustration of the feeling and the emotion of loneliness.
Finally, because E. E. Cummings is a noted humorist, and because the writer of this essay is a student, it may not be out of place to mention a thought that could extend and expand a student’s appreciation of this idiosyncratic masterpiece. No student—as student per se—experiences a greater sense of loneliness than in the examination hall looking at the piece of blank paper in front of him, and perhaps every student draws courage from the first letters that s/he draws on that blank white page, which invariably resemble in shape the letters that make up the title and the first line of Cummings’ poem, “l(a”: 1 (a).
References
- Macleish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.”
- Cummings, E.E. “l(a.”