"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
-e. e. cummings, c. 1926
"A Cummings reading was a formal, dramatic event. It was more like a play than a reading. In the tradition of Dickens, who memorized his ninety-minute lectures and used his book only as a prop, Cummings brought a tremendous amount of theatrical skill to the art of reading. The writer Gerald Weales, who made a study of poetry readings, divided readers into three categories: performer, personality, and public speaker. Cummings was definitely a performer. On the shadowy stage, the goose-neck lamp was the only light. Cummings quietly entered and began to read, using his mimicking skills for different characters and voices to great effect. He could be side-splittingly funny and sadly sentimental within a few moments.
His voice - aristocratic, reassuring, and yet somehow filled with the wonder of childhood - was electrifying. He did all the voices, and he seemed to become the characters he had written as he read - his enjoyment of the work and the audience was easy to see. Whether he was reading something playful ('may I feel said he?') or angry or deeply serious and sad, his voice was brilliantly adapted to the material. Cummings played his voice, letting it go loud and soft, high and low, using vibrato and falsetto, as the poems demanded."
-Susan Cheever, e. e. cummings: a life
In Cummings's own voice:
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