One times One, by E. E. Cummings

CONCEPT

I have a general familiarity with E. E. Cummings, and so the playful weirdness of this collection did not take me off guard. What did surprise me (repeatedly and increasingly the more closely I read) was the persistent and hopeful, and ultimately ambiguous, play with the concept of unification and common experience.

The theme is most explicitly present in the title. Printed One times One on the cover of the book with a parenthetical 1x1 printed on the side, the two formats invite at least superficial consideration, which is further encouraged by the importation of the title in the collection. The poems are nominally bundled into three sections "1," "x," and "1" and the title and its parts come up repeatedly in the pieces themselves. For example, "XVI" begins "one's not half two. It's two are halves of one", "XLIX" states "of to born of / be / / One", and "XLIX" ends with "oneness". The last line of the book is "we're wonderful one times one". The range of references to multiplication and the number one throughout the poems (directly or indirectly as a union of two separate objects, such as "my are your" in "I") allow this consideration to be taken literally.

From the vantage point that the title equates what it claims to equate, we could fairly call this collection of poems "one." Tension, however, is retained between the presence of this simple and undifferentiated "one" and the pending one in the title as is: a one comprised of two separate entities put together. By matching the poems' references to the actual properties of the multiplication, the effect is neither additive ("one plus one") nor stereotypically multiplicative ("x times x"), but is unitive.

Literal reading also enables all kinds of fun, brain-teasing possibilities. For example, the image in the mirror in "XXX" is equivalent to the viewer. In "XX," "the single secret will still be man" suggests the chance to compound both secrets and humans together and with each other. Maybe most enticingly, in "XVI," "one's not half two. It's two are halves of one." This can be literally true if the "two" represents two independent and equal terms of any quantity. As equal quantities, their multiple is their value squared. As whole beings, as "ones" that add to two, their multiple is one.

The obvious extension is to consider these "terms" to be people, which I think is what Cummings does throughout in using the device to talk about love.

* * * * *

I've dwelt on the title for a long time, but the phrase "one times one" is the most permeating and ambitious plane of connection I found in this piece, and demonstrates the opportunity for and accessibility of multiple meanings and careful attention to large-scale structure. That said, most of these poems exhibit a selective ambiguity and the possibility of decoding independent of their relationship to the title. For example, in "XIV" one stanza concludes with "lenses extend" and the following stanza begins with the word "unwish." By splicing the last and first syllables, respectively, the sound of the word "tendon" is present, but split in half between stanzas. And this in a poem talking about doctorly incompetence!

Later, in "XXVII" statements may not make complete sense of an event or situation, but they convey a general impression:

old mr ly
fresh from a fu
ruddy as a sun
with blue true two

man
neral
rise
eyes

The words combined and rearranged, however, might spell out a more explicit statement:

old mr lyman
fresh from a funeral
ruddy as a sunrise
with two true blue eyes

Most of these poems provide a reader with some tool or device to use in deciphering. Even in the more abstract selections, the individual combinations can make their own individual sense. In "I," "nonsun blob a" could alternately suggest either a "blob of nonsense" or a "blob without sunlight."

* * * * *

In sum, I enjoyed this collection very much not only for its rhythms and images, but because its ambiguities felt like a dialogue with the author. That is, while the pieces do not fully add up a demonstrable end, elements relate to each other concretely and establish resonance with a theme of identity and combination. These themes are, themselves, paradoxical and ambiguous. I can manipulate his words and meanings and where they seem to take hold I can extract a meaning (about love or unification or identity and so on)... but only a negotiated and limited meaning.

To go out on a limb, this is what I see as the tie in to the broader theme of "myself and others." In considering the possibilities of merging two whole, discrete objects into one (and in choosing to be the "objects" he manipulates), One times One is an assertion of the validity of sharing, of common identity and common experience. Discreteness, in other words, has its own limitations.

END OF POST.