love is more thicker than forget

by E. E. Cummings

e.e. cummings enjoys a cigarette
with the characteristic stare of someone
who loves life and, therefore, living.
Hades will have a hard time ever
finding this man, :)

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky





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For a review of the background to the life, poetic style, and historical context that shaped E. E. Cummings' exceptional body of work, please read the brief essay immediately after the following poem—

•  "since feeling is first"

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You may also enjoy these other poems by Edward Estlin Cummings:

• "now does our world descend"

• "if you like my poems"

• "as freedom is a breakfastfood"

since feeling is first, by e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings enjoying life at his
Joy Farm in New Hampshire.  Only having seen
the worst humanity had to offer was he able
to write some of the most beautiful, loving,
yet still socially conscious poems of all time.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis




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Originally published in is 5 by E. E. Cummings.  Since it isn't public domain yet, you can read about half of the poems contained therein by clicking here.

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e.e. cummings (without capital letters as he did not like capital letters much) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894.  He died on September 3, 1962, being the second most widely read poets in the United States after Robert Frost [read some of his poems], as great a poet and wonderful counterpart precisely because they almost represent polar opposites insofar as style, tone and thematic content.

After completing undergraduate studies and a Masters of Arts at Harvard University by 1916, Edward Estlin Cummings enlisted as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War I.  Five months later, he was detained on suspicion of espionage by French authorities.  The consistent and constant vitalist message in his poetry, his enduring love of life, is likely a product of having witnessed the "War to End All Wars".

Of course, the "War to End All Wars" did not end all wars and, in fact, led to an even deadlier and longer one, World War II, only two decades later.  However, contrary to popular belief, World War I was far more gruesome for participants than was WWII.  The reason for this is largely technological. On the one hand, airplanes were still too basic to provide any decisive advantage, and tanks only came into existence near the end of that war, invented by the English and quickly replicated by everyone else, but these were too few, clunky and slow to permit the quick troop movements seen during the Second World War.

World War I tank.  These roaring machines were so noisy
and scary that their tactical effect was more psychological
than anything else.  Just imagine being holed up in a tench
and seeing one of these buzzing machines you had never seen before
coming toward you and ignoring the many lines of barbed wire.

On the other hand, the machine gun had been perfected and great strides had been made in artillery, mortars, and in chemical warfare, particularly mustard gas, against which early gas masks afforded little protection.

Machine guns were the decisive force during during World War I.
Here you see infantry employing them in trench warfare
while wearing gas masks because of the frequent use
of chemical warfare as a means to advance from trench to trench.

The result was that the First World War was largely a trench war that was basically a stalemate where troops would advance with many losses from one trench to the next only to have a counterattack drive them back from that trench to where they had come from.  The use of toxic gas had two purposes: not only did it provide a cloud of cover that impeded proper aiming by machine guns, it also killed or severely injured the troops holed up in the trench that was being advanced towards.

Photograph of World War I infantrymen spending their days
 in trenches covered by sandbags and protected by barbed wire.

The First World War only ended because the Allied Powers managed to successfully flank the Central Power's trench lines, cutting off their front line troops from receiving supplies.  This maneuver led to a Conditional Surrender or Capitulation by the Central Powers (i.e., Germany, the Austria-Hungary Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), unlike the end of World War II which was concluded in an Unconditional Surrender.

World map of the Allied Powers, the Central Powers,
and their colonies, at the onset of World War I.  Allies shown
in green; Central Powers shown in orange, and neutral territories
are displayed in gray. Russia withdrew from the war in 1917,
ceding the territories the Central Powers had managed to occupy
following the Bolshevik Revolution and their need
to focus on internal affairs as their new state restructured.
The United Socialist Soviet Republics would get back control
over these territories following World War II.

The conditions set by the Allied Powers (i.e., the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan) split the Austria-Hungary into two separate states, spelled the end of the Ottoman Empire, but the conditions were harshest against Germany, being considered the main culprit.  These included large territorial transfers, of particular importance are Alsace-Lorraine going to France and most of Western Prussia going to the establishment of the nation of Poland.  However, it was the large economic reparations imposed on Germany that led to its economic collapse soon afterwards and allowed the Nazi Party's rise to power.  Not surprisingly, one of Hitler's first orders of business was to violate the Treaty of Versailles via a surprise re-militarization in 1936 of the Rhineland; moreover, the German invasion of Poland on September 1939 marks the beginning of the Second World War.  Allied cowardice permitted it all, and Hitler would later say "If France had then marched into Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs", a hypothetical event that would have likely prevented WWII altogether because the French army was still overwhelmingly larger and better equipped than Germany's given that the latter had just begun the rebuilding of their military strength.

Click to Enlarge.
German territory at onset of World War I
and the remaining territory at the end of
World War II, in gray at top, in blue at bottom.
The reunification of Germany did not occur
until 1990, following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

History aside, the psychological effects of the dehumanizing nature of World War I and the mass and unusually cruel deaths that were everyone to be seen had a profound influence on e.e. cummings' celebration of life, living, and the vitality in all of us that most people either hinder or ignore.

Otto Dix (1924) "Shock Troops Advance under Gas".
Otto Dix participated in what is known as Germany's
cultural Golden Age during the decade of the 1920s.

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Read more poems by Edward Estlin Cummings.

now does our world descend, by e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings displayed
an innocence in his eyes that he would
never recover following his experience
as an ambulance driver during the
First World War, even if this hopefulness
was replaced mostly with an intense will to—
and a joy for—life in later photographs.

now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind:
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer's doom

create now is contrive;
imagined,merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were

hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they've become the same
it's time you unbecame

where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong's the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt

but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss -
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing
- arise,my soul;and sing



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For an informative background of the life, style, and historical context encasing e.e. cummings' exceptional body of work, please read the article immediately after the following poem—

"since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings

You may also enjoy these other poems by Edward Estlin Cummings:

• "love is more thicker than forget"


• "if you like my poems"

If you like my poems, by e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings poses, embodying
a success all-too-rare for a career poet,
exuding a charisma that contains a joy of life
that is contagious throughout his poetry.

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."



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For an informative background of the life, style, and historical context encasing e.e. cummings' exceptional body of work, please read the article immediately after the following poem—

"since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings

You may also enjoy these other poems by Edward Estlin Cummings:

• "love is more thicker than forget"


• "now does our world descend"