Favorite poems: an ongoing series of poems, with commentary, as selected by Century editors at large

Christian Century, Oct 9, 2002 by E E Cummings

   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

   (i who have died am alive again today,
   and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
   day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
   great happening illimitably earth)

   how should tasting touching hearing seeing
   breathing any--lifted from the no
   of all nothing--human merely being
   doubt unimaginable You?

   (now the ears of my ears awake and
   now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Reprinted from Complete Poems: 1904-1962, by E. E. Cummings. Edited by George Firmage. Copyright [c] 1950, 1978, 1991 by the trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright [c] 1979 by George James Firmage. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation.

THIS POEM draws me back again and again. The sheer exuberance of the language captivated me over 30 years ago. "Leaping greenly spirits of trees" delights the tongue, even as it conjures up spring's first glimpses of lacy growth that delight the heart. And "gay great happening illimitably earth" forces the reader to slow down. Returning to the poem now in middle age, other associations force their way in. I hear the voices of those who struggle for every breath and whose every movement brings pain, but who nevertheless rejoice in a "blue true dream of sky." And I sense in the poem the defiance of those who have hope despite the relentless violent headlines and the desolate images blasted out by CNN. As a Christian, I hear in Cummings's words the echoes of other words: the psalmist's praise of God's gift of life resounds in the opening imagery; Gabriel's assurance to Mary that nothing is impossible with God slips in with the invoking of "unimaginable You"; and Paul's urgent declaration of God's grace echoes in the "now" of the final lines. The poem awakens our ears and opens our eyes in ways only possible when a poem begins: "i thank you God for this most amazing day."

--Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary.