I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

cummings poetry contains a radically romantic worldview. It's so alien from the suburban "middle-class non-indetity" I grew up in that I found it incomprehensible the first few times I read his work. Over the years, I've come to wish I could live the way his poems insist is possible. I've chosen a poem that contains the essence of that worldview, a poem that captures love, and one that fell a few lines short of greatness (just to be fair).  I might skimp on the analysis of some of the poems. cummings, more so than most, needs to be felt and lived. While careful reading is necessary for understanding, it feels hideously wrong to approach cummings analytically. Without further ado, the great e e cummings.