Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town by E.E. Cummings - Book Report/Review Example

 Poetry Analysis: “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” Introduction E.E. Cummings’ poems often were untitled and thus “anyone lived in a pretty how town” is merely tentatively titled by its first line. The poem, published in 1940, is an ambiguous work that details the life and death of a character called “Anyone”, who both stands alone as an individual and remains representative of literally anyone in society. The life of this man is written to portray the sad existence of so many people who live and die without being loved or appreciated, and the town in which he lives is populated by “someones” and “everyones” who continue on with their daily lives only thinking of themselves. The poem addresses one of the most major concerns for individuals in any society: the fear of dying alone and without touching the heart of another person. Anyone The main character in the poem is a lively man: “he sang his didn’t he danced his did” (Cummings); however it is clear that the people around him did not notice or care about his existence: “Women and men (both little and small) cared for anybody not at all” (Ibid.). This basic premise of the poem is very simple however it reflects the plight of many people in society who try their best to live life to the fullest and simply cannot hold the attention of anyone else who wishes to share it with them. Anyone is not an outwardly timid man, nor is he particularly a social outcast, it is simply that he does not have a partner in life and the fact that “someones married their everyones” (Cummings) merely highlights the fact that Anyone was alone in a world where everyone else seemed to find happiness with other people. Anyone is aptly named because he can literally be anyone, anywhere, who struggles to be appreciated and loved by one other special person (Baum 162). Noone Noone is an elusive character who it eventually becomes clear does not actually exist at all. She is presented as the admirer of Anyone, at first: “Noone loved him more by more…she laughed his joy she cried his grief” (Cummings). The children in the town comment about how Noone loved Anyone, and while this seems like it might allude to the fact that Anyone is loved by someone who he does not love in return, it becomes apparent that Noone is more of a dream that Anyone has (Deutsch 114). He thinks about the non-existent Noone who might share in his life; he carries this dream with him until his death when “Noone stooped to kiss his face” (Cummings). In this ending sentiment in the life of Anyone, the poet finally admits that Anyone’s lover did not exist and this is the sad legacy in which the man leaves the world. Noone therefore exists both as a dream and as the reality of loneliness (Lennard 133). Critical Analysis “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a poignant piece of work particularly because it addresses an aspect of life that not only is apparent daily but over the course of the years, and finally in death. Cummings was able to portray his characters well in their motivations and emotions primarily because he used simple observations that call on the reader to fill in the blanks, and he used irregular syntax to give the poem a more abstract feel (Austin 45). Superficial statements used to describe the way the townspeople act and how Anyone is perceived by them are useful because they show the culmination of years of interactions between the two parties however leave those details up to the imagination of the reader. This is an excellent way to express the poem’s meaning because of the assumption that the reader will sympathize with Anyone; any reader becomes Anyone and in doing so will have their own reasons why Everyone doesn’t care about them. This freedom on the part of the reader makes the poem unique to every individual and therefore it has the ability to become personally significant. Because of the way it is written, this poem does not make character motivation clear however it does create a world in which generalities about motivation and situational response can be construed. In particular, it is the role of the children to gossip and then forget what they have seen and talked about as they get older and the subjects of their gossip die and are buried. The children in this poem actually act as the voice of the townspeople, who otherwise are silent and merely seen as fringe characters acting out their own lives in no relation to Anyone (Williams and Honig 529). Author’s Purpose The purpose of this poem can be interpreted in many ways. First, it might have been written as a way to reach out to lonely individuals and to sympathize; on the other hand it might have been written so that people think twice about how they react to others and judge their existence. These two basic themes are present in the poem and it is most likely that both were the intention of E.E. Cummings upon writing the piece. Perhaps most important to the author was simply the cathartic relish of writing a poem that accurately expressed his own feelings towards life and the indifference of his peers. This need not be interpreted merely as a love-lacking story in reference to the author himself, but perhaps as a response to the indifference of society to his own existence in terms of his work, his emotions and his motivations and needs. Cummings clearly wanted to express the universality of this lonely story and in doing so it stands to reason that he was one of the many lonely characters walking the earth worrying that his life would be forgotten as soon as it ended by people who had never bothered to properly know him. The poem seems to express his desire that people become more willing to see and interact with others around them so that no individual is doomed to live an entire life that will never be remembered by a single soul who might have tried harder. Overall Perception of the Poem Poetry can very often be difficult to understand because it is full of metaphor, symbolism and ambiguity, however in quality poems these aspects add to the overall effect instead of taking away from it. “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a work that uses these aspects with great success because the actual writing is done in such a way as to help the reader understand the simplicity of the story and ascertain ambiguity and symbol from there. The poem seems to change as it is being read over again because certain facts become apparent and the perception of the reader changes. What begins as the light, charming story of a little town and its tunnel-visioned people becomes a melancholy take on life due to very simple characterization and a quick life-to-death plot. The mood of the poem is almost haunting in that it follows you once you have finished reading. The best feature of the work is the subtle passage of time throughout that follows certain stanzas: “spring summer autumn winter”, and “sleep wake hope and then” (Cummings). These phrases effectively take a very short story and break it up so that the reader is caught up in the actions of the townspeople in reference to the changing of seasons and years, before finally “one day anyone died I guess” (Ibid.). This is a very sweet and sad poem whose characters linger with you. Works Cited Austin, Timothy. Language Crafted: A Linguistic Theory of Poetic Syntax. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Baum, S.V. (ed.). E.E. Cummings and the Critics. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1962. Cummings, E.E. “Anyone lived in a pretty how town”, The Modern Poets: An American-British Anthology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963. 68. Deutsch, Babette. Poetry in Our Time. New York: Henry Holt, 1952. Lennard, John. The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Williams, Oscar and Edwin Honig (eds.). The Mentor Book of Major American Poets: From Edward Taylor and Walt Whitman to Hart Crane and W. H. Auden. New York: New American Library, 1962. Read More