An Interpretation of My Sweet Old Etcetera by E.E. Cummings :: Cummings My Sweet Old Etcetera Essays

An Interpretation of My Sweet Old Etcetera by E.E. Cummings' "my sweet old etcetera" is part of E.E. Cummings' "is 5" collection of poetry, which was published in 1926. This poem and most of Cummings' other poetry was known for its typographic innovation. One will definitely notice that there are only two capitalized letters in the whole piece and not one period. The only punctuation mark present is the comma, creating pauses in the speech. Basically the whole poem is a big run-on sentence. "my sweet old etcetera" was written, as well as most of Cummings' other poetry, to have visual effectiveness and content as well as literary effectiveness and content. After all Cummings was a painter and an artist. He wanted people see the poetry, not just read it. In order to understand what the poem is all about, one might rewrite it and break it up into readable, complete sentences. One must also place appropriate syntax and punctuation where it needs to be. Of course, one has to remove all of the "etcetera"s in order to make a sentence that makes sense. I believe that this is a story in which E.E. Cummings is telling. It is about an experience he is having while at war and how it is effecting his family during this time. The language is not flowing because the typography, the lack of syntax and punctuation makes it confusing. The word "etcetera" was thrown in here and there, but why? This made it very difficult to understand to get the whole picture, because the word's various positions caused an interruption. The word "etcetera" means "a number of unspecified additional persons or things." or "unspecified additional items". I believe Cummings wanted to say more within the poem but thought he could get his poem across by inserting "etcetera" in various places. He also might have been trying to make a statement by telling the world, "you don't have to get a point across by using a lot of detail sometime, you don't even have to use complete sentences..or even sentences at all for that matter." my sweet old etcetera