words :: books :: ideas

Monday, December 05, 2005

a lesson from cummings

recently i read a poem by e. e. cummings. according to my literature book, edward estlin cummings "abandoned the rules of grammar and punctuation in an attempt to write a new kind of poetry." i didn't really understand the entire poem, but some of the form and style were appealing.
one thing that stood out to me was his usage of capitalization. the whole poem was lowercase (including the title and author's name) except for words referring to God.
although it may only have been for style or to break the rules of capitalization that e. e. cummings wrote in lowercase, i'm impressed by the fact he didn't even capitalize his own signature. it shows great humility of himself and respect to God.
our Creator is the only being who deserves to be capitalized.

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