E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem–in which men and women are the two halves of a bell’s tone–voices the rhythms and joys of life in an unconventional way that has to be heard and understood with the body before the mind. Happy reading.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is
0:09.8	Friday, April 25, 2025. Today's poem is by E. Cummings, and it's called Anyone Lived in a Pretty
0:17.7	Howe Town. And Cummings, if you are even the least but familiar with his poetry,
0:24.7	you know, has a way with words. And his way is to twist words and not in a kind of
0:33.9	sophistic equivocational kind of way, but to rewire words so they begin to do
0:43.0	different jobs, you recognize their meaning, but it's seen from an odd, an oblique angle.
0:52.2	Nouns start to function as verbs and vice versa. Verbs begin to function
0:59.4	as nouns. Nouns and pronouns swap places. And all of this makes for a poem that's hard to
1:08.4	analyze in a straightforward way, but you feel it. It's like one of those
1:16.1	three-dimensional hidden picture images where you have to kind of cross your eyes and let them
1:22.4	unfocus and then slowly come back into focus and all of sudden, the computer-generated image pops out at you.
1:30.6	It's a little bit like that, but for the emotions, maybe, you have to kind of read this,
1:36.1	crossing your sentimental or analogical eyes, and then letting them come back into focus and all of a sudden the sense
1:49.2	is there and it's clear though you can't perhaps turn around and put it into words for
1:56.0	the person next to you. Here is anyone lived in a pretty how town. Anyone lived in a pretty how town with up so
2:08.0	floating many bells down. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. He sang his didn't, he danced as did.
2:16.0	Women and men, both little and small, cared for anyone not at all.
2:20.6	They sowed there isn't, they reaped their same. Sun, moon, stars, rain. Children guessed,
2:27.2	but only a few, and down they forgot as up they grew. Autumn, winter, spring, summer. But no one loved him more by more, when by now,
2:37.0	and tree, by leaf, she laughed his joy, she cried his grief. Bird by snow, and stir by still,
2:44.5	anyone's, any, was all to her. Someone's married their everyone's. Laughed their cryings and did their dance, sleep, wake,
2:53.9	hope, and then they said their nevers, they slept their dream. Stars rain, sun, moon. And only the
	...

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