I have a challenge for you

I bet it's something really tedious like a reference to one of Jack the Ripper's victims

"u wot luv, I've got a mind to stahb you in the quim"

This is how I interpreted it. It reads like an exasperated love letter written by a sexually frustrated and unable patron of prostitutes.

You're the closest one in the thread, but you're not quite there.

ay m8 I'm just trying to hav some fun ok no need to be an asshole

>he reads for meaning

He is mystified by the whore and knows his question to why he is mystified will never be answered. That is also part of the allure of her (them).

sex. it's sex.

ee cummings is a hack

The whore could be interpreted as just a whore, but look at the language in the first stanza closer.

what is it job's wife? is that your big discovery? guess what: the discovery of an historical irony is the beginning of interpretation, not the end

You are a dick.

You were a douche when you didn't have to be.

You're a dick.

im sick and fucking tired of dropping shit like this in the 1st paragraph and spending the remaining pages in dense analysis of the resultant aporia and getting an A, while people spend their whole paper getting to the point that it's Job's Wife and also get an A. I'm sick and tired of people who think interpretation is solving riddles, that poetry is a long struggle to compose the most sublime joke, that the realization allegory is the end goal of literary criticism.

could we have another hint?

of* allegory

It's Job's Wife

I feel bad for calling you a dick now - I'm sorry my dude. Your response is true - and I've never seen it put so succintly. I'm going to think about what you said for the next few days probably.

Thank you for writing all that.

Don't get the Job's wife thing. I was honestly about to posit that he was using the conceit of a whore to talk about his dick.

>I feel bad for calling you a dick now - I'm sorry my dude. Your response is true - and I've never seen it put so succintly. I'm going to think about what you said for the next few days probably.
>Thank you for writing all that.
I lolled

Brittle --- isn't that ALARMingly more like an object, not a human? a very physical word, it can be used metaphorically to mean a person is weak, but it more suggests an actually object.

"WOODEN big two feet". feet are like hands.

what is an object with two hands whose "tiniest whispered invitation / is like a clock striking in a dark house"?

An alarm clock. The "delicately wobbl[ing]" face like the FACE of a clock? The two feet which prop it up on the table?

What does the alarmclock represent? Time, and awakening. What did Christ say? "Arise, ye sleepers! For the hour of retribution is near!" Christianity (in its highest esoteric meaning) urges constant wakefulness, watchfulness, attention; the majority of humanity spends their life asleep, in a trance, not considering that they're going to die, that they have limitations, that there are things far more important than them. The ALARMCLOCK is what awakes them from this sleep, also what makes them consider the inevitable passage of time, further awakening them. What is time if not death? who is the man considering whether he should blasphemously ask God why he is perversely wedded to time and death but Job? Who is Job but all of us? Who is our wife but the killer of all, Time and Death intertwined?

If you're going abuse Cummings, we could at least look at the whole sonnet-cycle of whores.

FIVE AMERICANS (Sonnets) E. E. Cummings

I. LIZ
with breathing as (faithfully) her lownecked dress a little topples and slightly expands one square foot mired in silk wrinkling loth stocking begins queerly to do a few gestures to death, the silent shoulders are both slowly with pinkish ponderous arms bedecked whose white thick wrists deliver promptly to a deep lap enormous mindless hands, and no one knows what (i am sure of this) her blunt unslender, what her big unkeen "Business is rotten" the face yawning said what her mouth thinks of (if it were a kiss) distinct entirely melting sinuous lean . . . whereof this lady in some book had read

II. MAME
she puts down the handmirror. "Look at" arranging before me a mellifluous idiot grin (with what was nose upwrinkled into nothing earthly, while the slippery eyes drown in surging flesh). A thumblike index downdragging yanks back skin "see" (i, seeing, ceased to breathe). The plump left fist opening "wisdom." Flicker of gold. "Yep. No gas. Flynn"
the words drizzle untidily from released cheeks "I'll tell duh woild; some noive all right. Aint much on looks but how dat baby ached." and when i timidly hinted "novocaine?" the eyes outstart, curl, bloat, are newly baked and swaggering cookies of indignant light

III. GERT
joggle i think will do it although the glad monosyllable jounce possibly can tell better how the balloons move (as her ghost lurks, a Beau Brummel sticking in its threecornered always moist mouth) —jazz, for whose twitching lips, between you and me almost succeeds while toddle rings the bell. But if her tall corpsecoloured body seat itself (with the uncouth habitual dull jerk at garters) there's no sharpest neat word for the thing.
Her voice?
gruesome: a trull leaps from the lungs "gimme uh swell fite like up ter yknow, Rektuz, Toysday nite; where uh guy get gayn troze uh lobstersalad

(con.)
IV. MARJ
"life? Listen" the feline she with radishred legs said (crossing them slowly) "I'm asleep. Yep. Youse is asleep kid and everybody is." And i hazarded "god" (blushing slightly)—"O damn
ginks like dis Gawd" opening slowly slowly them—then carefully the rolypoly voice squatting on a mountain of gum did something like a whisper, "even her." "The madam?" I emitted; vaguely watching that mountainous worthy in the fragile act of doing her eyebrows.—Marj's laughter smacked me: pummeling the curtains, drooped to a purr . . i left her permanently smiling

V. FRAN
should i entirely ask of god why on the alert neck of this brittle whore delicately wobbles an improbably distinct face, and how these wooden big two feet conclude happeningly the unfirm drooping bloated calves i would receive the answer more or less deserved, Young fellow go in peace, which i do, being as Dick Mid once noted lifting a Green River (here's to youse) "a bloke wot's well behaved" . . . and always try to not wonder how let's say elation causes the bent eyes thickly to protrude— or why her tiniest whispered invitation is like a clock striking in a dark house

a-am I getting memed on

Yes. You should be scared.

I agree wholeheartedly my man but also pls remember you're on Veeky Forums in the summertime

>im sick and fucking tired of dropping shit like this in the 1st paragraph and spending the remaining pages in dense analysis of the resultant aporia and getting an A, while people spend their whole paper getting to the point that it's Job's Wife and also get an A. I'm sick and tired of people who think interpretation is solving riddles, that poetry is a long struggle to compose the most sublime joke, that the realization allegory is the end goal of literary criticism.

god i would clap standing up if you were here

It's not job's wife

The woman on the first stanza is an object

i think you're wrong

that was a good read and good gnosis

>people think it's job's wife

Bump

Cmon someone's gotta be able to get it right

wonderful post thanks

I read it for the sound and the images. I don't give a damn about the meaning. Either it's apparent, in which case I discover it and maybe appreciate it, or it isn't, in which case I don't give a damn as long as the sounds and the images excite me.

I am an hedonist. I read and write poetry for the sex in it.

ee cummings makes perfect sense when you're high. or not really but y'know, do I care care when I'm high? that's why I keep a copy around.

MARY. FUCKING. MAGDALENE.

MADE OF ACTUAL FUCKING WOOD.

IN A FUCKING CHURCH.

>I am an hedonist. I read and write poetry for the sex in it.
Gross

...

Ok OP why don't you just tell us your huge revelation

Fuck off, orf.

this desu

some things are good at being puzzles but not Cummings

so right it hurts

ah, is this another "orf pretends he knows anything about poetry" episode?

Ok
The woman is a poem or a book.
The "alert neck" is a page
The "distinct face" is the words on a page.
The two wooden feet are the front and back cover.
The calves are the pages on either side of the page that's being read.

The narrator is trying to make sense of what is written on the page, but he ends up going in peace.

Therefore the poem is a metaphor for itself.

This interpretation opens a whole new world of meaning to the poem, so I won't write it all out and I'll let you work it out.

holy shit this is so wrong lmfao

covers aren't made of wood you cunt.

pleb
who's orf?

>poorfag

So in the first stanza he's asking why a book has covers and pages?
Personally I don't think so, I prefer other suggested interpretations in this thread.