my father moved through dooms of love

In recent weeks, I have begun to read a lot of poetry, and although I have really found a love for the form and the inventiveness of writers, none I have come across have had the effect on me that ee cummings has had. I think "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is now probably my favorite poem ever, but I just finished reading "my father moved through dooms of love," and it is right there in the runnings for sure.

Kind of interesting that on first reading of most of cummings poems, there does not seeem to be a whole lot of sense to be gleaned from them. They remind me much of some of the writings of Lewis Carol (whimsical, yet nonsensical), but as you begin to dig and get past the unusual grammar and syntax, a meaning which is more profound because of it's break with traditional forms seems to materialize.

There are a number of great passages in this poem, but a couple of my favorites are:

"his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile."

"if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow."

And the last 4 quatraines, some of the most powerful and profound poetry out there (I cant just put in a line or two, they all go together)

"then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all"

Some wonderfully scary and powerful ideas/images in there! "To differ a disease of same,""conform the pinnacle of am" "dull all we taste as bright" Fantastic stuff for sure!

Dooms of love made no sense to me on first reading, but after getting to the end, and stuggling for a short while one negins to see how difficult cummings thinks it is to live an original life and a life steered by love. The fatalistic "dooms of love" takes on a meaning all it's own, with none of the usual deadness that comes attached to lifeless cliches most other writers choose to use. Of all the modernists that I have read, I find that cummings came closest to the ideal of creating new, original, exciting forms of expression. The testiment to this is that 71 years after it's original publication date, the poem seems as fresh and as vital as I am sure it did it did on day one.