Essay About Particular Person And S Ambiguity Plays

Time in Thomas? Fern Hill and Cummings? Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
Time in Thomas? Fern Hill and Cummings? Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
“Historically speaking,?time is lost; poetically speaking,?time is regained in
the act of visionary creation” (Crewe 400). Poetry allows for the capture of a
moment in time otherwise lost in the blink of an eye. British poet Dylan Thomas
and American poet E.E. Cummings have both been noted for the recurring themes of
passage of time in their poetry. In Thomas? “Fern Hill” and Cummings? “anyone
lived in a pretty how town,” both modern poets utilize a juxtaposition of
paradoxes to express the irrevocable passage of time and the loss of innocence
attributed to it. While Thomas projects his mature feelings into a nostalgic
site of his childhood, Cummings takes a more detached approach by telling a
seemingly trivial, paradoxical story of “noone” and “anyone,” which through
negation tells a universal life story.
“Fern Hill” is a personal account, Thomas? nostalgic revisit to a place where as
a child he had spent time with his aunt. Through this sentimental revisit, he
comes to realize the inevitable passage of time and a resulting loss of
innocence. The poem was actually triggered by his visits to Fern Hill as an
adult during a time of war. After Thomas?s hometown Swansea in Wales was bombed
by the Nazi air campaign against Great Britain, Thomas? parents moved out to
their cottage near the farm of Fernhill. “[Thomas?] visits to his parents during
the war triggered the memories of the happy Edenic times when he was young and
thoughts of war were still distant” (Miller 99). In this poem, he revisits both
his own childhood, and ,symbolically, the childhood and prewar innocence of his
country.
“Anyone lived in a pretty how town,” is less personal. A love story made trivial
through the use of “noone” and “anyone,” this poem plays on words to negate the
existence of these lovers while concurrently emphasizing their existence not
only in this town, but in any other town. As individuals the lovers are ignored
by “mostpeople” whose routine lives reflect the passage of time. The only to
notice the lovers and stray their attention from life?s normal routine are the
children, who maintain their innocence, but who soon grow up and forget.
Cummings has been noted for this regular indulgence in the themes of “love,
birth, growth, dying, and their antithesis,” (Wegner 48) as found not only in
this specific poem playing the parts of the cycle of time but also in many other
of his works.
The poem is expressing the concrete and paradoxically its opposite through a
play on pronouns. “Anyone lives in a pretty how town” is “the story of
mostpeople and individuals, simultaneously a joyous and sorrowful song” (Turco
93). The title?s ambiguity plays on the use of a “hypallage: rearrangement of
syntax – word order – in a sentence”(Turco 92). The title could be interpreted
as either “anyone lived in a pretty how town” or “anyone lived in how pretty a
town” or “how anyone lived in a pretty town.” The “anyone” could be nobody in
particular or that particular person capable of love. As Robert Wegner writes,
“[a]s and adjective modifying town, [how] is a superbly descriptive word
suggesting in one touch the typical town