My sweet old etcetera

I'm reading two very different books at present. The first is something I read back in secondary school and am now revisiting, John Gribbin's In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, about the history of quantum physics. Which made me remember how the whole idea of atoms being little solar systems with electrons whizzing about in orbits wasn't necessarily accurate.

And, by contrast, I picked up a copy of Etcetera, an anthology of unpublished e.e. cummings poems. Got a call late Tuesday night, and she asked "what are you doing now?" And I had to answer, truthfully, "reading poetry". Which is possibly a preposterously pretentious-sounding response. But there's some beauty there.

Comments

Anonymous said…
As for the poem, My Sweet Old Etcetera, it was a real sad and beauty ending. This poem could evoke the deep voice from soul to against war.
But, I do not clearly understand the wording as "what is more did tell " in second paragraph.
Does it mean the war been mentioned by aunt Lucy to the young man or many of his family had been said it to him?
4 August 2006 at 03:59
Anonymous said…
Greetings from America and from the future! I think this poem is a commentary on a war. It seems to take the form of a love letter written by a soldier who is talking about the preparations his family made to support and justify the war. I think of it as the musings of a young man forced into inhumanity when all that he really wants is to be with his girl.
10 September 2008 at 11:21
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