When I’m not busy making the world a better place through technology, I sometimes have disjointed thoughts about poetry. Its construction, its meaning, and the general overlay. Here’s a little e.e. cummings to round out your week.

i thank you God for most this amazing

If you’re not familiar with this poem, I’ll suggest a few things first:

1. Visit the link above and read it.
2. Listen to this recording of e.e. cummings himself reading it.
3. Keep the poem open in a new tab so it’s easy to get to.

For starters, I think from the colon through the second stanza is one massive parenthetical phrase about the indescribable amazement that is the world we’re in.

And that the first line relates directly to the third stanza (though would be hollow without the second). Still, though, that third stanza also has all those parentheticals in it.

So its skeleton is “how should any human being doubt You”.

how should [tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing] any [—lifted from the no
of all nothing—] human (merely) being
doubt [unimaginable] You?

And that final couplet is how, when you consider the amazingness of the planet, your eyes and ears can’t help but be opened to the reality of God.

Thus ends an abridged look at the really dense reading that is an e.e. cummings poem.