I first fell in love with the poetry of E.E. Cummings, I think, because I considered him a kindred spirit. Cummings is most well known for his aversion to the basic rules of grammar so his punctuation, capitalization and even spacing can seem wonky and unstable.
As an English/Language Arts teacher, I’m supposed to love grammar and I do … it’s the teaching of it that I despise. No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to teach grammar without coming across as wonky and unstable myself.
If the grammar in Cummings’ poetry bothers you, look past it and you will find some of the most beautiful language ever written.
For example, Cummings writes:
“i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky, and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes”
E.E. Cummings is one of many poets who have found beauty in nature and the beauty of God in nature.
In college, I took a nature writing class and I still remember that first class sitting in a circle in the grass outside. The professor, Annie, instructed us to close our eyes, and then after a moment, tell each other what we felt. I’m sure she was hoping for something metaphorical, sensory and beautiful.
But when it was my turn, I’m pretty sure I said something along the lines of … “I feel ants crawling on my leg.”
I wasn’t impressed with nature.
One of Annie’s assignments was to journal, to walk out into nature and observe and write down everything. I used to joke that Miami University (Ohio) had so few trees, that they had printed the location of each one on the campus map. In the center of campus was a spot referred to as “woods.” And if you had any doubt of its “woodsiness,” there was a plaque to remind you. It was possible, sometimes, in these woods, to lose sight of people for a moment or two. There were even parts where the sounds of cars and city all but disappeared.
In those moments, something odd happened to me. The more I wrote, the more I saw, the more I really saw (not vice versa) of nature. The act of writing opened me up to experiences I might have previously ignored. Joan Chittister says that writing “brings us into contact with our souls.” Writing about nature opened me up to something I didn’t know was a part of me.
Now there are times, sometimes early in the morning, when I see a Great Blue Heron fly low, skimming across the top of the water that I hold my breath in wonder of it all.
There have been times in my life that I have felt about God the way I feel about nature. There have been times of distance, distances I’ve been unaware of until I stop for a moment to look for Him.
And there have been times of wonder, sometimes on Sunday mornings, when a hymn or a line from the sermon snags on a piece of my soul and pulls so suddenly that I want to cry in His presence.
And like E.E. Cummings, I thank God for all those moments.
