Summary of article by Liz Brent on "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e. cummings.

by sswimstar17 (student)

GCSE English

Suzanne O’Connor

English 10 Honors

Mrs. Huenke

March 9, 2012

Summary of article for “maggie and milly and molly and may”

Brent, Liz. "Critical Essay on 'maggie and milly and molly and may'." Poetry for Students. Ed.

Jennifer Smith and Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. http://go.galegroup.com.

Through Brent’s article, the reader of E.E. Cummings’s “maggie and milly and molly and may” can fully appreciate the lack of capitalization, incorrect grammar, and unconventional word, letter and punctuation spacing in not only “maggie and milly and molly and may” but also in other of Cummings’s famous works. The poem is not only meant to be reread several times to fully understand Cummings’s concept, but also to challenge the brain with the improper grammar used in the poem (Brent).

The first stanza, “maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach(to play one day)” shows Cummings’s playful and childlike tone. The alliteration not only creates a “lyrical, singsong tone, reminiscent of a nursery rhyme,” but helps the reader picture the four girls “skipping joyfully down to the beach to play” (Brent). The lack of capitalization of the four girls makes the mind believe the poem is the writing style of a young child because “the lack of sophistication may lead her to forgo capitalization of her own name” (Brent). The word “beach” being jammed next to the open parenthesis without a space implies the eagerness of the children to reach the beach “that they are nearly tripping over their own feet in their hurry to arrive” (Brent).

This is a preview of the whole essay

Later in the poem, “maggie finds a seashell which, when held to her ear, sounds as if it is singing ‘sweetly’” (Brent). Milly decides to “befriend” a starfish. Molly is chased by a “horrible monster” which the reader figures out is some sort of crab, which blows bubbles, that invites the reader to “imagine that molly is not truly frightened by the sea creature, but only playing make-believe that it is some ‘horrible’ and threatening monster” (Brent). May even finds a round stone, “which is ‘as small as the world and as large as alone’; that a small stone could represent the entire world suggests the vast capacity of the child’s imagination, which can create entire worlds out of the smallest object” (Brent). Stone and alone not only rhyme, but create a “heavy, plodding sound which seems to weigh down both the singsong, nursery-rhyme sounds which precede it and the emotional tone of the entire poem (Brent). The whole tone of the poem is changed from playful and childlike to adult as “the word ‘alone’ sinks like a stone in the reader’s heart” (Brent).

In the sixth and final stanza of the poem, capitalization is used to suggest a “grown-up,” serious tone. With the word ‘for’ being the first word of the stanza, the word implies a logical conclusion is about to be grasped. Cummings also mirrors the second line of the poem by using “lose” crammed up next to the open parenthesis. Because the poem has already taken on a serious tone, the reader is hit with an even “heavier blow.” The first line of the sixth stanza reads, “For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)” introduces not only the idea of a lost one, but the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Cummings then used the line to reveal parallelism to the objects on the beach. “The beloved person is grammatically reduced to the status of an animal or inanimate object, such as one whimsically finds on the beach” (Brent). And finding an object is always less tragic then losing a loved one. “The final line, ‘its always ourselves we find in the sea,’ calls to mind the idea of aloneness mentioned in the previous stanza with the image of a stone ‘as large as alone.’ Having lost a loved one, the ‘we’ of the poem is always left ‘alone,’ and there is only ‘ourselves’ to reckon with” (Brent).

I like how Brent paid special attention to all the minor detail in the poem, like the alliteration in the first line meaning more than just a strategy used and the objects on the beach relating to the loss of a loved one. Brent made the poem easy to understand for me and made me ponder why Cummings decided to use the words he used or why the order of the girl’s name matter. With the analysis of the poem next to me, Brent made me enjoy the poem more than I would have if I read it several times. Brent helps remind not only the readers of her articles, but the readers of Cummings’s work to pay special attention to the unusual writing style he made popular.

Word Count – 741

Sentences Varied – 6

Writing Strategies – embedded quotes, present tense, parallelism, showed ideas (last paragraph)