O Sweet Spontaneous By E.

E Cummings

The Earth is a beautiful, yet, uncertain and complicated thing, or is it? According to E. E
Cummings and his poem O Sweet Spontaneous the Earth is perhaps not as complicated or
complex as some of us would like to believe. In fact, as Cummings discusses in his poem, the
earth is a very simple and predictable thing that never stops giving.

In the first couple stanzas in the poem Cumming talks about how the the doting prurient
fingers of philosophies pinched and poked ... sciences naughty thumb prodded thy, this
shows Cummings discontent with science and philosophy poking and prodding at earth
and trying to come up with answers. Similar to a doctor giving a check up, or a child
running its sticky fingers all over something important or expensive. This bothers
Cummings because he believes that the Earth is there simply for us to witness and
experience through our eyes and ears, and that we should not manipulate and take
advantage of it.

The next couple of stanzas Cummings discusses how religions taketh thee upon their
scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting that thou mightest conceive Gods In these stanzas
Cummings is relating to how religion is a constant search to make meaning out of earth and
why we are here, when the answer is quite simple and already presented. The answer
being that one must simply live this beautiful life to find its answers, that maybe there is no
answer, maybe the answer is simply to be, just like the earth.

The last few stanzas Cummings addresses the natural inevitability of death and how we
humans have a tendency of either trying to beat it or give it more meaning than it really
has. j
In the Last stanza Cummings states that although Earth is subjected to all of this poking
and prodding by things such as science, philosophy and religion, it still continues to keep
on giving, to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover, thou answer them only
with spring. This expresses how no matter how much we may abuse the Earth it
continues to give us its most precious gift, life.
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"O Sweet Spontaneous by E.E.Cummings | synthetic_zero." 2013. 12 Mar. 2014
<http://syntheticzero.net/2013/10/15/o-sweet-spontaneous-by-e-e-cummings/>
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"Edward Vogel - Insights and Interpretations: O Sweet Spontaneous ..." 2010. 12 Mar. 2014
<http://edsliterarytheory.blogspot.com/2010/03/o-sweet-spontaneous-e-e-cummings.html>
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"Edward Vogel - Insights and Interpretations: O Sweet Spontaneous ..." 2010. 12 Mar. 2014
<http://edsliterarytheory.blogspot.com/2010/03/o-sweet-spontaneous-e-e-cummings.html>
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<http://www.cstone.net/~romie/cummings/sweet.html>
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"Analysis - O sweet spontaneous - Cstone.net." 12 Mar. 2014
<http://www.cstone.net/~romie/cummings/sweet.html>
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"Analysis - O sweet spontaneous - Cstone.net." 12 Mar. 2014
<http://www.cstone.net/~romie/cummings/sweet.html>