in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
weeThe form of this poem is what immediately caught my attention before reading it. There are not much stanzas, and even when there are, the words are spaced out. I wonder where the intent of writing poems in this form lies and if Cummins got his inspiration to craft the poem like this from other poets. Is this supposed to express the absence of space and organization of the speaker of the poem? There seemed to be a very childish and playful attitude of the poem. Cummings, overall, plays on the form of any other “typical” poem. He does not capitalize the names of the characters within the poem and also does not put spaces in between eddieandbill and bettyandisbel. I was not even able to make a distinct decision of what the foot and meters are. As far as the context goes, I was able to realize that there is a balloonman and he carries some effect on the boys. After reading this poem for the second time, I unfortunately was still not able to understand what is actually occurring, only the setting and the characters. I also did not understand where the title comes from and how it is relevant to the poem.
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