O sweet spontaneous by E.E. Cummings

In this week's poem, E.E. Cummings offers some perspective on humanity's angst and curiosity. He is playful and stylized as per usual.

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest

them only with

spring)

E.E. Cummings (1894-1962) discovered an original way of describing the chaotic immediacy of sensuous experience. He played games with language and form and put forth a deliberately simplistic view of the world, giving his poems a gleeful and precocious tone. He was born in Cambridge, Mass., attended Harvard and studied Art in Paris.