pity this busy monster, manunkind
"pity this busy monster, manunkind" is a poem by American poet E. E. Cummings, first published in his 1944 book 1 × 1. It is among his best-known poems.[2]
| pity this busy monster, manunkind | |
|---|---|
| by E. E. Cummings | |
| First published in | 1944 |
| Country | US |
| Form | Sonnet[1] |
| Meter | Free verse |
| Publisher | Henry Holt (1944) |
| Lines | 14 |
The poem laments the triumph of progress—defined in terms of science and technology—over nature, describing progress as a "comfortable disease", and declaring "A world of made / is not a world of born". To Cummings, the "busy monster" is a society bent on subverting nature and individual humanity, the loss of which is to be mourned. In closing, the poem's speaker suggests – with an ironic optimism – an escape to "a hell of a good universe next door".[3]
The poem relies on coined compound words and other wordplay to carry its meaning.[3][4] As with many of Cummings's poems, his idiosyncratic orthography and grammar provide an immediacy to the printed words.[2] Like other modernist poets, Cummings uses unusual typography to draw focus to the typewriter as an instrument of the machine age.[3]
Cummings considered the fourteen-line poem a sonnet, by his own loose definition of the term.[1][3]
References
- Jason, Philip K.; Irons-Georges, Tracy, eds. (2002). Masterplots II: Poetry. Salem Press. pp. 3011–3013. ISBN 9781587650437. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
- Bloom, Harold (2009). "James P. Dougherty on the Third Poetic World". E. E. Cummings. Infobase Publishing. p. 96. ISBN 9781438115665. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- "pity this busy monster,manunkind Summary". eNotes. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- Widdowson, Henry (2003). "English as an international language". Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxform University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780194374453. Retrieved 13 January 2017.