Spacing In The Poem In Just By E. Cummings

Many of the modernist poets we’ve been reading have used unique spacing in their poems, but E. E. Cummings’ “in Just-” is definitely one of the more strangely structured. I find this structure interesting because the frequent use of line breaks and spaces often interrupt the rhythm of a poem, creating a start-and-stop reading that can turn a simple line into something confusing. Obviously the choice of this jolting rhythm is for a reason, but I felt that Cummings use of spacing was more intelligible than spacing in a poem like “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams. For instance, the first stanza of “in Just-” uses extra space in between “spring” and “when the world is mud-” (2), as well as a line break in “little / lame balloonman” (4), to stand in for a comma, inserting a pause that’s more visually distinct than a comma but just as instinctual. Although this may be an oversimplification of the reason behind
Both “eddieandbill” and “bettyandisbel” not only speed up the poem’s rhythm but imply so much about these children and their relationship: they’re attached at the hip; they’re a package deal; they haven’t yet formed an identity outside of each other. The fastening of the names also seems to imply a familiarity from the narrator’s point of view, as if everyone in the neighborhood knows these kids, knows to always expect them together. Meanwhile, “balloonman” has the same implication of proximity, but with the relationship being between a man and his occupation, it doesn’t have the same whimsy of “bettyandisbel.” Instead, it indicates unfamiliarity: this man exists only in the confines of his occupation. Admittedly, these details are only small pieces of the meaning of this poem, but the fact that Cummings can make space, or lack thereof, just as important as the words makes analyzing his poetry endlessly