Georgi Nease

E.E. and Me
Poetry is something that I have held very dear to me for a long time, since I was very
young. I would always tell myself and others that out of everything that's happened to me,
everything that has been taken away from me and every facet of myself that is displeasing, my
poetry, my work, is something that I definitively have and will always possess. It is something
that I can be proud of.
I can't remember exactly the first time I wrote a poem. I know that it was as early as
fourth grade. Even then I was quite proud of my work and pleased with myself, but that is not
what this narrative is about.
I could go on to tell about how poetry and the discovery of it has impacted me, built me
up as a person, and helped me cope with life. I could tell countless instances of me growing as
person because of my poetry, as well as discussing how my poetry has changed throughout the
years. There are so many that I could share, but there is only one instance, one encounter, that
truly stands out in my mind. An encounter that was the cause of a clear shift in my work as well
as in my thinking and attitude toward life and literature.
When I was a senior in high school, I took an AP Literature class, and halfway through
the year, we received a new teacher, because our previous one had left. The new teacher we had
shifted the classs focus from just solely reading literature like our previous teacher had been
focusing on to also touching on poetry explications as well as analyzing and explicating novels.
He wanted to make sure we covered enough material and a wide variety of things in order to do
well on the AP exam.

When we worked on going over and learning how to do poetry explications, we would
work on a few poems at a time. One of the poems we worked on was an E.E. Cummings poem
that he had taken from a book of his poems. This was the very poem that we read and
explicated:

When I read this poem, it stood out to me, and I instantly fell in love with Cummings
style, and I greatly respected his courage to go outside of the box and be different. He was a
revolutionary within poetry - he defied everyone elses standards and convention. He was able to
make something beautiful and artistic by bending the rules. By discussing and reading that poem
that week in class, it made something go off, so to speak, inside of me. It marked a shift in my
poetry.

In the past, I had dabbled somewhat with Cummings style, because for a while, poetry
similar to his was popular on tumblr. However, it still hung on to quite a bit of conventional
form, and it was merely a fad - a phase. Even though I wrote a few poems in this popular style, I
almost didnt quite see them as being poetry, and I still held on to the standard style of poetry in
most of my other works. Discovering E.E. Cummings brought liberation - it brought me out of
these ways of thinking, about what poetry is and isnt.
I began to experiment with my format and my style of my poems. For so long I had been
caught up in rhyme scheme and form, and once I discovered this different way of writing, I
completely broke away from my original ideas and form. I started writing poetry about everyday
occurrences and feelings. I wrote what I was thinking off the top of my head, and I arranged it
how I thought it should be without taking rhyme too much into consideration. If things happened
to rhyme, then they did.
This style became more fitting for me. The poetry I wrote as a coping mechanism for life
and for dealing with my mental illnesses all of a sudden became even more helpful. I had already
held my works very close to my heart before, but I began holding them closer without even
realizing it. Things fell into place. My poetry was more real, more organic. It conveyed more
emotion, and it took on a life of its own. It gave me much more confidence and much more
freedom. All of a sudden, I could convey my thoughts more accurately and with more emotion. I
had nothing holding me back anymore.
So, dear reader, what is the message of this narrative? Im sure one would have a good
idea. My message is simple: Convention, style, what people expect and what has been the norm,
is overrated. I used to believe that the more structured, the more eloquent your writing looked
and sounded, the more sophisticated and beautiful it was. This was a wrong and misguided way

of thinking. Literature is a vast and unique art form - it is full of such beauty and complexity, and
it cannot be held down by rules and social convention. Poetry, essays, novels, articles, short
stories, etcetera, can take on a life of their own. They can convey such meaning and emotion, yet
often times they are held down by others expectations and the rules that have been laid out. I say
that that is a waste. Some of the most beautiful works I have ever read have been in Cummings
odd and unique structure. Some of his lessons, his purpose in his work, can only be conveyed
accurately and properly with his structure. To give them a standard structure would be a
disservice. It would take away the meaning and the emphasis.
In true anarchist fashion, do away with the system. Art has no confines, no restrictions. It
has no right or wrongs and most certainly no rules. So when youre writing something, dont
pander to anyone else. Dont write what everyone expects. Dont tailor what you have to say and
how you say it because others say its not proper or desirable. Life itself has no rules and no set
structure, so live how you see fit, write how you feel, and express yourself.

I had been a poet ever since I was young. Growing up and going through my teenage
years, it was a coping mechanism and one of my greatest joys in life. It was something I could
feel proud of, and it was one of my few talents that I was actually quite sure about.
However, Id always been restricted by the forms that I had seen in many other poetry. I
used them to define my own poetry, and I felt insecure if my poetry did not match their structure
or how they expressed ideas. I had been trapped in this way of thinking for many years. It often
restricted what I had to say and narrowed down I could say it, and many times I left ideas and
poems incomplete because of this.
One day, when I was in school, we discussed a specific poet. His name was E.E.
Cummings. We read through and analyzed one of his poems, and it was the catalyst for the

change in my thinking and ultimately in the change of my style of writing poetry. He wrote his
poems quite differently. He didnt use a specific form, and he hardly even stuck to the rules of
grammar. I loved it, and I became the happiest poet in the kingdom.
My poetry soon took on a new life. I did away with form, rhyme (unless things happened
to rhyme), and grammar rules. I did away with expectations. I wrote what I wanted to and how I
felt, and that made all the difference. I was no longer confined and held back.
So the lesson here is that literature is a vast and unique art form - it is full of such beauty
and complexity, and it cannot be held down by rules and social convention. Poetry, essays,
novels, articles, short stories, etcetera, can take on a life of their own. They can convey such
meaning and emotion, yet often times they are held down by others expectations and the rules
that have been laid out. I say that that is a waste. Some of the most beautiful works I have ever
read have been in Cummings odd and unique structure. Some of his lessons, his purpose in his
work, can only be conveyed accurately and properly with his structure. To give them a standard
structure would be a disservice. It would take away the meaning and the emphasis.
Art has no confines, no restrictions. It has no right or wrongs and most certainly no rules.
So when youre writing something, dont pander to anyone else. Dont write what everyone
expects. Dont tailor what you have to say and how you say it because others say its not proper
or desirable. Life itself has no rules and no set structure, so live how you see fit, write how you
feel, and express yourself.