Unknowable Love

In E. E. Cummings’s poem “somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond”, the reader sees a speaker fully in love with another. This love is described throughout as being an unknowable power over him. Beyond being an unknowable power, this love is an irresistible force on the speaker. Through the extensive use of nature imagery and layered similes throughout the poem, the speaker makes out the love he has to be something unwilling, an obligation to the beloved, one which she does not even know she creates in him. In the first quatrain of the poem, the speaker uses unusual syntax and paradox to express the unknowable nature of his beloved. This can be seen in the first two lines where the speaker explains that “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly
It begins with the first two lines, “your slightest look easily will unclose me/ though i have closed myself as fingers,”, which state that even though he has closed himself as one would their fist (as a violent image and a sign of aggression), his beloved can easily “unclose” him (5-6). The choice of the word “unclose” as opposed to simply “open” is because it acts as a near homophonic rhyme with “enclose” at the end of line 3. The poem largely avoids having an auditory form, lacking a definite meter though having a consistent syllable count in the first quatrain. It does, however, have a visual form through Cummings’s distinct lack of capital letters and lack of spaces following commas. In the lines “you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens/ (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose,” one word deviates from Cummings’s standard style by beginning with a capital letter (7-8). Here, the word “Spring” begins with a capital letter, emphasizing the importance of the word to the whole of the poem. In the seventh and eighth lines, the speaker likens the way his beloved uncloses him in lines five and six to the way spring would open her first rose. Again, it is explicitly described as unknowable and mysterious, but there is something more to it. A poet would want to avoid clichés unless they are using it to their benefit as
Again, the dichotomy of closed and open is used, in this case to show the emotional state of the speaker. To be “open” is to be kind, to be in love. In this case, closed would be the opposite. One who is “closed” would be just the opposite: aggressive, angry. The line “though i have closed myself as fingers,”, which is where the first mention of the closed/open imagery appears, directly compares it to the image of a fist (6). In the lines “or if your wish be to close me,i and/ my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,” the use of the closed imagery does not seem to fit in with what had been previously established (9-10). However, continuing through the stanza to the eleventh and twelfth lines, where the speaker continues his thoughts vi enjambment, it is said “as when the heart of this flower imagines/ the snow carefully everywhere descending;” (11-12). Throughout literature, the image of falling snow has been used to represent death and here it is no different. It is explicitly stated as “[…] i and/ my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly” which is to simply say that if his beloved were to wish him dead, not only would he comply, it would be “beautiful” (9-10). It is also worth noting that the enjambment between lines nine and ten separates “i” and “my life”, making the two idea exist as separate things: the speaker is something other