i carry your heart by E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Today's  poem is by E.E. Cummings, famous for his idiosyncratic syntax and love poems.  Cummings is a little difficult to grasp when you first read him.  His writing style holds meaning though, it's not written for flash alone, but to convey new meaning and modify the topic of the poem.  The topic, like many of Cummings is love.  As this poem doesn't follow normal stanza patterns we'll analyze it line by line. 

line I: i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

 Line one starts with a sentence.  In classic Cummings fashion there are neither capitalization nor periods throughout the work.  There's the vague feeling that none of these things are important. Stripping down the writing to the barest essentials, conveys the importance of the matter at hand. The paradox is that his style is deliberate well-practiced craftsmanship.  It's a unification of style and substance. The second part of line one and the beginning of line two  are bracketed. This lets us know that Cummings is speaking in an aside, Shakespearean style.  (Cummings was a great practitioner of the Sonnet form as well by the way)  The bracketed part breaks on I carry it in, which gives an impression that he's carrying his lover in some place.  The second part lets us know it's to my heart that he's carrying her.  This also serves as a sort of loose repetition of meaning, reinforcing the sincerity of his desire for the beloved.

line II: my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

The unbracketed part of the second line is both literal and figurative in it's truth, a double meaning.    He's obviously never without his beating heart, nor is he without thought of his love.  The second bracketed point emphasizes that it's with him anywhere.  

line III: i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

 line IV:  by only me is your doing, my darling)

 Line three begins and ends with the enjambment from anywhere into line four.  The emphasis from line two is that all places are the same when she's in his heart.  Line II-IV convey in a figurative sense that he does the things they do together when they're apart from one another.  He has her on his mind.

There is also a subtle mastubatory gesture within the lines, speaking of whatever a lover would do together that he does alone would be her doing.
 
line V:  i fear

I fear is deliberate in it's rhythmic break.  Here Cummings preps us for the worst.  Let's see what comes next. 

line VI:   no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

Line six turns the i fear from line five into a gesture of fearlessness.  The aside turns on fate with an attributing his fearlessness to the understanding that she is his fate.  Coupled with an endearing my sweet.  I want begins the enjambment for the next line, this creates a complex staccato rhythm between the lines.  These consist of two one syllable words that are inverted by asides.  

line VII:  no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

  I want no world is fully figurative and ends the sixth and seventh line enjambment.  Obviously he wants her in his world.  While the bracketed part continues on in haste to explain that she is his world and his truth.  This bracketed part repeats the rhythmic pattern with an endearing term. 

line VIII:   and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

  Here Cummings takes a break from brackets and continues on with a change in rhythmic patters set in the brackets above.  He fits a massive thirteen syllables into one line, leading the reader to speed up their reading to  keep the rhythm of the whole complete.

line IX:  and whatever a sun will always sing is you

Here there's a simple repetition in the line of and and whatever as in the line before it cements a mini couplet with a juxtaposition of the words sun and moon.  Cummings uses direct metaphor you are instead of simile in order to create a stronger impression of desire.  Again Cummings creates a union of style and substance that's almost explicit in his attributions of what the sun and moon do, which is song and meaning. 

line X:  here is the deepest secret nobody knows

 Line ten is a build up.  It's another rhythmic change adding accent and expression to the line in order to create the impression that someone is about to intimate something cherished and secret.

line XI:  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

Lines eleven through thirteen form yet another an enjambment.  the brackets and foreshadowing of line ten aid in accelerating the tempo of the reading.  Line eleven is a repetition of calling things what they are.  This is a subtle juxtaposition between this bracketed portion, and lines eight and nine which a direct metaphors.  He repeats root, bud and sky, creating an encompassing impression of everything that can be seen from under the earth to the sky. 

line XII:  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

 The explanation of the secret is that all these things makes up a tree called life.  There's a subtle phalic reference with the tree which is natural in a love poem like this.  It should be noted that Cummings had never made a habit of shying away from the topic of the erotic in prior poetry. 

line XIII:  higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

 This line brings us back to the subject of the aside which is a secret.  The narrator discloses that this secret could never be hidden.  Mind and soul are somewhat tritely connected, but the poem invigorates the pair with new meaning, intimating that his love is a secret that he cannot keep.

line XIV:  and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

 Here the second to last line slows the tempo, a denouement before the crescendo which takes place at the end.  The line continues the  ascent from root to stars.  This climbing also entails an ascent from the physical nature to the celestial, a hint on the process of transmuting physical attraction into classical fated love. 

line XV:  i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

The poem ends with a variation on the first two lines.  It omits the words with me from line one , and continues the bracketed portion of  line one and two. This enhances the urgency and cohesion of the beginning lines.  Instead of something the narrator carries with him, it has become a part of him.  Where the bracketed part occurred over two lines, it now occupies a single line.  Two have become one at the end. 

 

 

An Analysis of Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;T

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

The poem begins in media res,  capturing the urgency of the moment and the general topic of the poem which is the suffering of warfare.  The second half of line one is a simile indirectly referencing their sufferings.  The sacks alluded to here are probably the war gear that the soldiers in World War I carried on their backs.

The second line foreshadows the intensification of the soldiers suffering, mentioning the soldiers coughing and wading through sludge.   The coughing and the sludge will be reintroduced later in the figure of the dying soldier. 

The third line is vivid in it's depiction of the soldiers leaving the front and the haunting flares that hang over it.  Owen paints an eerie picture of the light cast off in the distance behind the soldiers.

The fourth line continues the march away from the field and towards the promised rest there.

The fifth line begins with an consonance Men Marched asleep.  Emphasizing again the wretched state of affairs the soldiers endure.  It's noteworthy how Owen carries this theme without belaboring the point.  The lines are long and striking in their imagery.  So far they have followed an ABAB rhyme scheme with heavy visual depictions.  Another aspect is the movement of the soldiers themselves towards safety and rest. This keeps the implied misery of the soldiers from becoming overwrought and adds nuance to the rhythm.

The sixth line conveys that the soldiers have reached the nadir of their limits.  They're beginning to lose their senses out of sheer weariness.  Going lame and blind, covered in blood.  The mention of blood is noteworthy in that it's the blood of the soldiers.  Owen never mentions the enemy or their cause.  Given the tone and mood of the poem, these sentiments are beyond these men who have been pushed up to the breaking point.  With the inability to walk or even see anything around them there's no room for high ideals here.

The seventh line carries hints of foreshadowing.  The key point Owens emphasizes is their ever diminishing awareness of their surroundings.   Their perception have  narrowed down to whats in front of their faces and in some cases not even that much.

Line eight ends with the consequences of this condition,  their situational blindness.  They have no way of detecting the gas canisters that have fallen behind them. 

Line nine begins a new stanza with a distinctly different mood.  The recognition of the gas from the canisters instills a panic in the soldiers.  An anonymous member of the squad shouts out a rally to take precautionary measures.  The gas alluded to is likely phosgene or chlorine gas.   It's worthwhile to do a little research on these weapons.  The manner in which they attack the nervous system and cause death is particularly grisly.  Owen continues emphasizing the anonymity and mechanical nature of warfare.  There are no enemies you can see, no ideals, there's just misery, suffering, and death.

The second part of line nine might take a little time to digest.  The shock and dissonance on the line is furthered by the word ecstasy which seems out of place.  But one only has to recall times of sudden adrenaline bursts to understand the euphoria mentioned here.  There's something sordid about the dissonance, the idea of pleasure at all in this place.  Yet the word fumbling reminds us that the clumsiness that exhaustion has wrought upon them has not abated.

Line ten focuses on the gas masks that these soldiers would have been equipped with among the packs they'd been slugging along.  The word helmet is an antiquated word used to refer to the masks.  The masks are no doubt clumsy as this sort of warfare was new and the science and technique of creating these fail safes was not well advanced.

Line eleven begins the movement away from the complete anonymity of the poem thus far.  No individual has been visually represented up to this point.  The characteristics of the situation has thus far been emphasized.  Here we see the only noted victim of the attack as the soldier would see him, as someone shouting out and stumbling.  Like the war itself, the nature of death here isn't quick and immediately apparent.

Line twelve is a terrible description from one of the squad members of this strange new way to die.  It's as if he was on fire, or covered with Lime.  For the reader who isn't familiar with lime and it's effects on the body, a popular reference to this is in the movie Fight Club, where the protagonist burns his hand with it.  It's highly caustic to the skin and the scene from the movie can give you a good idea of what a small application to an isolated part of the body can do to you.

Line thirteen continues with the narrator helplessly observing his squad mate.  Safely protected by the gas masked as his compatriot dies a slow and painful death nearby.  The ubiquity of the gas has colored the wasteland green, and is so effusive that it's as if they're standing on the bottom of the ocean.

Line fourteen describes the soldier as drowning.  This is an apt depiction not only because of the eerie feeling of being on the bottom of the ocean, but because the gas is either causing him to spasm to the point where he can't breath, or eating away the lining of his lungs to the point that he's choking on the sludge that their becoming.

Ironically line fifteen begins the third stanza and cements the dying soldier as an individual.  Where before the soldiers in the poem were anonymous appearing only briefly,  this soldier has died yet he remains.  If only in the mind of his squad mate and his dreams.

Line sixteen is reifies for emphasis of the gruesome nature of the death.  The word guttering suggests the extinguishing of a candle flame, in this case the flame of the soldiers life.  Here again the soldier recounts the bizarre strange and harrowing experience of being at once on land yet under the ocean, of watching a man on dry land drown right in front of his face.

Like line nine line seventeen marks both a new stanza and a new train of thought.  Here the narration continues after the fact.  The tone of weariness in the first stanza is reintroduced, but this time the weariness isn't physical.  It's the weariness that stems from watching people die in a grisly manner. The immediacy prior has been softened by the invocation of a dream. 

Line eighteen juxtaposes the sentiment of loss with the utter lack of decorum accorded to the dead soldier.  He was thrown in a cart.  Highlighting again the differences between the ideals and the realities of the war.

Line nineteen talks about the white eyes writhing in his face.  The gas here has marred and contorted his human features.  Where the dead should have a sense of stillness in them, the eyes of the dead here continue writhing.  The word writhing in general use is often connotated with suffering and squirming to get away from it.  Here even in death the soldier hasn't found rest.

Line twenty has another complex comparison, this time making the soldier into a devil, but a devil that is sick of sin.  The preceding line gave us a depiction of how marred the soldiers eyes were, here again the self of the soldier is mutilated in that he carries the appearance of a devil, but somehow at the same time a devil weary of evil.  The situation and circumstances have become so imbued with suffering that even a devil would be sick of it.

Line twenty-one again stresses the impossibility of conveying to the reader the sense of atrocity and loss felt. The blood of the dead soldier like the eyes in his face continue to move, beyond the point of his death.  As though the horrible fate that befell him has overpowered his capacity to die.  The mutilation continues to effect him.

Line twenty-two returns again the foreshadowing alluded to in the mentioning of sludge.  Here the sludge is the froth corrupted lungs of the soldier.  The muck of the war has completely enveloped him and his comrades.

Line twenty-three  compares the effects to cancer, and it's obscenity upon the body.

Line twenty-four speaks of the sores that affect the mucus membranes common to victims of phosgene.  There's no cure for it.  But neither is there a cure for the soldiers who live on in witness of it.  If the dead soldier has assumed the likeness of a devil, then who is innocent here?  The truth of the matter may be that the contortions have twisted him into the image of something he is not.  The same may be said of the soldiers who live on after in witness.

Line twenty-five begins an in-stanza shift to a tone of admonishment.  The stanza thus far has consisted of a hypothetical assumption of what the reader would believe if they could see the aftermath of this gas attack.  Here Owen comes around to attacking the title of the poem.  Not in an haughty proud manner, but as one who has seen the war with his own eyes and knows the line derived from Horace's Odes is a lie. Nothing about the soldiers death was sweet or honorable.

Line twenty-six characterizes the adherents or people who put credence in the idea of Dulce et Decorum est as children.  An emphasis on their innocence to the realities of warfare and expectations of it.

Line twenty-seven  and twenty eight consist of an enjambment.  Owen closes the poem simply stating that Dulce et Decorum est is an old lie.  The depictions and experiences of his account leave little room for arguing against the reality of his attribution. 

Owens virtuosity in poetry hints that he was well educated in the literature of the Victorian era, where poetry such as Tennyson praised the virtue and nobility of warfare.  His knowledge of roman verse hings that he was schooled for this sort of upbringing. 

The advent of the industrial revolution however changed the nature of warfare.  Turning individuals into grist for the mill by machine guns and victims of chemical warfare.  Owens poetry is in some sense a rebuttal of his upbringing and the sentiments that were fostered upon him.  The glory of warfare is rebuffed with an honest accounting of the human misery involved therein.