Student Question
What is the mood of "since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings?
Quick answer:
The mood of "since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings is one of spontaneity and emotional intensity, contrasting the rigidity of reason and conventional structures. The poem advocates for embracing emotions over logical thinking, suggesting annoyance at the suppression of feelings by societal norms. Through language play and metaphor, cummings encourages living in the moment, akin to a "carpe diem" sentiment, emphasizing that life is too short to be constrained by rationality or order.
It seems difficult to me to say what mood this poem conveys. cummings is restating his philosophy that feeling and emotion are primary and reason is secondary. He believes that those who live their lives by reason alone will "never fully kiss you." That is, reason and convention cannot contain emotion just as syntax and form (paragraphs) are portrayed as metaphors for constricting emotion and meaning. So, he, stylistically and meaningfully, is saying that emotion and feeling are only fully experienced if they are not constrained; by syntax or reason. So, the mood seems to me to be either or instruction or annoyance. Reading it, I get the impression that he's almost annoyed at reason, or annoyed at the suppression of emotions. "Life is not a paragraph" - Life can't be described by a reasonable, objective, scientific series of connected statements as you would find in a grammatically and thematically...
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cogent paragraph. For cummings, life is more like formless poetry, with stops and starts, run-on meanings, and many ambiguities subject to different interpretations.
What is the premise of "since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings?
E. E. Cummings’s poem “since feeling is first” centers around a speaker who is attempting to persuade a potential lover to ignore her “wisdom” and the expected order of courting.
In much (if not most) of his poetry, Cummings plays with language, particularly capitalization and grammar. He does this effectively here. Cummings does this by comparing romance to language, particularly grammar and syntax. This is evident in the first stanza when the speaker says, “who pays any attention / to the syntax of things.”
One of the most effective comparisons between romance and language occurs in the final two lines of the poem in which the speaker attempts to tell the potential lover that life is too short (“death i think is no parenthesis”) to attempt to order it like “a paragraph” and not give in to their passion.
This love poem poetizes the dichotomy of feeling vs. thinking. The narrator is saying that the feeling, the impulse to kiss, is stronger and more valuable than the “decision” to kiss – the thinking of whether the time is right, the sequence of social events (“the syntax”) or the other mental calculations (“the best gesture of my brain”); the narrator is speaking his own thoughts at the moment of “making his move” (to use the popular vernacular). The final lines are perfect examples of Cumming’s use of grammar and language metaphors to express the connection (or in this case the non-connection) between emotion and expression. He says that life, unlike organized essays or logical argument (“paragraph”), is not a thought-out construction but is lived in the moment. He adds that death (and birth) are not enclosing logical events (in “parentheses”), but spontaneous utterances of the moment. This short poem is a modern version of a “carpe diem” poem, “seize the day.” (Final note: There is much controversy whether to capitalize his name. He, of course, did not.)