Tuesday poem: 'i carry your heart' by E E Cummings

Sean is reading this poem at his sister's wedding. It looked on paper like a difficult or awkward poem to read, so I went hunting on the internet to see if there were recordings of it being read, and there are quite a lot. I'm guessing it's a wedding favourite.

The different versions include this extract read by read by Heath Ledger, which I like better than the the previous entire version. I think he makes it sounds more natural, and meaningful. And, quite frankly, less sucky.


I'm not sure I'd come this poem before, but I am familiar with e e's work, and had been a bit of a fan ever since I read some of his work in the first-year English poetry anthology. But this poem, I really just don't know how I feel about it. I'm wondering whether he might have taken a bunch of lines from valentine's cards and made a poem out of them, except that root of the root, sky of the sky stuff - that's not really greeting-card material. Not that I'm quite sure what it means... But yeah, do you think it's a genuine love poem, or is a parody of love poems?

Speaking of love poems, sadly, once the manuscript got to the publishers, Paula Green had to cut some poems out of her anthology of love poems. So only one of my two poems is going to make it to print. It's this one here, which I've been thinking of a bit this week, as Sean spent a bit of time in hospital. He's all good now though, but must take care and wear warm coats and so forth.

There's lots more poems for you to enjoy via the Tuesday Poem blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/