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Cummings at Silver Lake

~ A weekend of art & music

Cummings at Silver Lake

Category Archives: Poetry

Open the window on E.E. Cummings

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Events, Music, Poetry, Silver Lake

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E. E. Cummings, Famous American Poets, Joy FArm, Madison Historical Society

The Friends of Madison Library open the window on E.E. Cummings at Silver Lake with a Weekend of Celebration.

Join us for a weekend of art, music, poetry and history exploring the relationship between the American poet and artist, E E Cummings, and the people and town of Madison, New Hampshire. Friday night will feature a “nonlecture”, art show, Cummings’ poetry set to music and discussion. On Saturday visit 8 local sites, including the Cummings’ Family Collection at the Madison Historical Society and the poets’ beloved “Joy Farm”.

Tickets include both the Friday night events and the Saturday tour. Box lunches will be available for sale at the Madison Library on Saturday. Tickets are $20 per person or $15 if purchased before June 30, 2015. All proceeds benefit the non-profit Friends of Madison Library.

Joy Farm will host an afternoon tea with limited seating by separate additional ticket purchased in advance. Tickets for the tea are an additional $10.

Some E.E. Cummings must be sung

25 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Music, Poetry

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Billy Collins, Natalie Merchant

E.E. Cummings, the poet of the “little i”, was also a poet of the EYE.

According to Billy Collins, himself a poet, Cummings broke “down words into syllables and letters”, employed eccentric punctuation”, and indulged “in all kinds of print-based shenanigans”.

Famously, Cummings wrote, “not all my poems are to be read aloud-some are to be seen and not heard.”

And, some were clearly must be sung, as Natalie Merchant sings maggie and millie and molly and may.

Cummings is not just for adults

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Poetry

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E. E. Cummings, Spring

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

(E.E. Cummings Complete Poems 27)
balloonman

“Maybe he had a mental problem”, said Becky, an eighth grader, on her first time reading “in Just-“. So begins a wonderful article by Audri L. Wood describing her classroom teaching Cummings’ poetry to adolescents.

“Fifteen minutes later…the entire class had dissected every potential meaning from every line, every space (or lack thereof), every word. Fifteen minutes of discussion. Fifteen minutes of asking why he didn’t have to follow preset formats for sonnets, haiku, and the like. Fifteen minutes of examining how they had written poetry, how they had manipulated spacing, capitalization, and words. Fifteen minutes of memories exploded, of breathless voices of running children, of the sounds of shoes pounding the pavement during hopscotch and the smacking of the jump-rope, of inseparable friends, and of the passing notice and constant awareness of adults being present and of their whistles, reminding you that it is not just a dream, that it is spring.”

(From Spring The Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society, New Series Number 6, 1997.)

E.E. Cummings~an early poem

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Poetry

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The seeds of Cummings’ unconventional style appear well established even in his earliest work. At age six, he wrote to his father:

FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,
HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,
FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,
LOVE, YOU DEAR,
ESTLIN.

-Cummings as a child by Charles Sydney Hopkinson

-Cummings as a child by Charles Sydney Hopkinson

A Celebration of people and place

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in Events, Joy Farm, Madison, Poetry, Silver Lake

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Our new Cummings at Silver Lake website and blog are intended to celebrate the people and places which inspired and informed the art and poetry of Edward Estlin Cummings, known throughout the world of letters as “e e cummings”.

The culmination of our efforts will be the Cummings at Silver Lake Weekend July 10 and 11, 2015.  Please join the Friends of Madison Library as we open the window on E. E. Cummings at Silver Lake.

In the meantime, skip around, check out our site and please let us know what you think. Do you know these people and places?

Newer posts →
Cummings at Silver Lake WeekendJuly 10, 2015
What an incredible E.E. Cummings at Silver Lake Weekend! Thanks to all who came and supported the Friends of Madison Library.

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