It’s difficult to ignore love poems when discussing poetry. Perhaps because poetry of any genre is filled with passion. For today’s selection – the second, if you’re counting – I’ve chosen “i carry your heart with me” by e. e. cummings, whose affinity for the lowercase always makes it difficult for me to type his name.
I hadn’t paid much attention to cummings until this poem. Several years ago, my mother tasked me with finding a poem featured in a movie she had watched on TV. “Something about ‘your heart,'” she had told me. After learning the title of the movie, it didn’t take me too long to find it. I still haven’t seen the movie – In Her Shoes* – that introduced me to the poem (despite being a romcom addict).
Despite enjoying Cameron Diaz’s voice, the reading I’m linking in the post is done by Parole Note. Please enjoy.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars aparti carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
e. e. cummings, from Complete Poems, 1904-1962
Chapin City Blues 