in Just / Buffalo Bill

1
in Just / Buffalo Bills /anyone lived in a
pretty how town

• e. e. cummings
• Presented by Rebecca
• Vita
• Revised by Cecilia H. C. Liu

2
e. e. cummings

• Edward Estlin Cummings
• born in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• artist, playwright and novelist
• Known for typographic innovation, Cummings
  controlled both the look and the content of his
  poems.
• ViVa 1931
• No actual titles
• Love poetry

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About the poemsomewhere I have never
travelled, gladly beyond

• Love
• Power
• The speaker
• Ann Barton
• Imagery Human anatomy and nature contradictory
• E. E. Cummings married three times. His first
  marriage to Elaine Orr (who left her husband for
  him) lasted only 6 months. His second marriage,
  to Ann Barton was a stormy, passionate one
  lasting only a few years. He at last met Marion
  Morehouse, an actress, model, and photographer,
  whom he married and lived with for the remaining
  30 years of his life.

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In Just

• Celebrates the arrival of spring from a
  childrens point of view.
• Grouped with poems called Chansons Innocentes
  ?Blakes Songs of Innocence and Songs of
  Experience.

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Pattern

• 3 regular stanzas 3 quatrains 2 refrains
• Dwindled pattern
• Marbles
• Hopscotch
• 4-1-4-1-4-1-4-1-4

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Symbol

• Children ? spring time
• Pan god of music and play god of the goatherds
  and shepherds.
• Christian conception devil/shepherd.

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• Long vowels lame balloonman, far and wee
• Wide spacing and line-breaks
• 1. dramatic pauses
• 2. distance the space of far and wee (far
  and wide or far and away)
• eddiandbill / bettyandisbel suggest a childs
  running of words together breathlessly.
• balloonMan naïve qualification by the speaker.

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Buffalo Bills

• Buffalo Bill a famous wild west showman in
  America.
• The word defunct instead of dead. (l. 2)
• The speaker admires Buffalo Bills skill in
  shooting and his good looks. (ll. 6, 8)
• how do you like your blueeyed boy(l. 10)
• ?a sarcasm.
• The death cancels Buffalo Bills skill and erases
  his good looks.
• A self-portrait of a disdainful speaker.
• Be unaware of a logical flaw in his reasoning and
  the irony of his situation.

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anyone lived in a pretty how town

• By using contrast between characters daily lives
  in the pretty how town (suggesting modern
  society), cummings satirizes the fight against
  individual by society.
• Characters (3 groups)
• anyone, noone ? spiritual values
• someones, everyones? social values
• children ? between the individualists and
  the conformists

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Contrast between the two groups

• the bell melody-like vs. sounds only
• time seasons vs. days (clock)
• live happily vs. live reluctantly
• care vs. indifference
• life vs. death
• spiritual values vs. social values

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• The speaker is also worried that the children
  might become conformists when they grow up.
• Playful tone anyone, noone, someones, everyones.
• The contrast between those who prefer individual
  spiritual values and the self-interested who
  prefer earthen values.

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Works Cited

• E.E. Cummings (1894-1962). The Norton Anthology
  of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. Shorter
  5th Edition. New York Norton, 1999. 2112-20.
• Picture sources
• lthttp//www.burbankymca.org/images/jumprope-copy.j
  pggt.
• lthttp//www.exposingmyself.net/2005/bag-o-marbles/
  gt.
• lthttp//www.geocities.com/ SoHo/8454/eecs.jpggt.
• lthttp//www.streetplay.com/photos/images/hopscotch
  .jpggt.