Journal # 5

S – A man
O – Embracing a women or talking to a women
A – Female or lover/ To those in love
P – Love is blind, but things are more beautiful with love
S - Love
TONE – Serious, lovable

Literary Critic

In since feeling is first, E.E. Cummings begins her short but sweet poem with a stanza of four lines. The “who” in the second line, right away, begins ambiguous because it can be interpreted two different ways. One way is by viewing it in a “who does that” way, meaning nobody pays attention to the syntax when in love. The other way one can view this is by “the person who” pays attention will never receive a good quality kiss or the kiss they want. Overall her diction here was perfect because it is up to the reader to decide which way they would prefer to read this. She states that love makes a person blind in line 5 by saying that “wholly to be a fool.” Then in line 7, Cummings uses “my blood” to resemble the speakers own feelings approve. Instead of just saying my strong feelings approve, she used a word that conveys the same meaning, which adds to her metaphorical speaking nature. In lines 7 and 8, it seems as though Cummings is saying that love has a better fate than wisdom, most likely meaning that with too much wisdom can possibly end in disaster. Love can also lead to disaster, but in her case she would prefer love. Cummings ends the poem nice by having the speaker in some ways seducing the female to him with his flattering words. By saying that “life s not a paragraph” (line 15), the speaker is telling his lover that life is not short and take is slow. The message was clearly illustrated up to the last line, and then Cummings ends on an ambiguous note. Moreover, I did not understand the last line, but if I had to guess I would think that she, through the speaker, is trying to say that death is not something to be looked over, like words within a parenthesis.