"[since feeling is first]" by E. E. Cummings

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April 16, 2022 

[since feeling is first]

E. E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 16, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“[since feeling is first]” appeared in Is 5 (Boni and Liveright, 1926).

E. E. Cummings, born Edward Estlin Cummings on October 14, 1894, was a poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright from the Modernist movement. The author of many collections, including 95 Poems (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. He died on September 3, 1962.

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Thanks to Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (Greenwillow Books, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Listen to a Q&A about Nye’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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