I Carry Your Heart With Me Analysis

The definition of love is something that varies greatly among individuals. In E.E. Cummings’s poem “i carry your heart with me”, Cummings effectively conveys that true love is a powerful force that brings complete unity between two people through the use of various literary devices such as capitalization, point of view, form, and imagery to enhance the meaning of his poem. First of all, Cummings intentionally defies a common rule of capitalization throughout the entire poem. Every time the speaker is referring to himself he chooses to keep the personal pronoun “i” (1) lowercase. In doing so, Cummings is conveying that one person is not dominant within a relationship thereby making the speaker recognize his insignificance as a single individual.
To be specific, Cummings removes the spaces between words and punctuation marks. There are several examples of this stylistic choice, but one that illustrates it very clearly can be found in a portion of the first stanza which reads “i am never without it(anywhere/ i go you go,my dear;and whatever id done/ by only me is your doing,my darling)” (2-4). The way in which Cummings opts to not include spaces between the words of his poem and the parenthesis, commas, and semicolons included therein, indicates to the reader that nothing can come between true love. The use of enjambment in which the lines of the poem flow together without interruption is also evidence of Cummings belief that true love is the product of inseparable unity. Another element of Cummings’s style that is exceptionally noticeable is the use of parenthesis around phrases that are especially romantic and endearing such as “(for you are my fate,my sweet)” (6) and “(for beautiful you are my world, my true)” (7). The way he makes the parenthesis wrap around the passionate serenades is symbolic for a lover’s embrace which gives the poem a more heartfelt and complex