that is wonderful said the elephant on the telephone or was it...

E.E. Cummings collection returned to library after more than 50 years

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- An Ohio library said a former patron mailed in an E.E. Cummings poetry collection that was more than 50 years overdue -- just weeks after a Bob Dyan record was returned 48 years late.

The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library said the poetry book arrived in the mail recently along with an anonymous apology letter and a "lucky $2 bill."

The letter writer said they were recently going through some old boxes of books when they came across the E.E. Cummings collection bearing a Cleveland Heights Public Library stamp.

"It's been over 50 years since I've lived in Cleveland, so this must have gotten boxed up when we moved," the letter reads. "I am so very sorry. Here's a lucky $2 bill for whoever opens this!"

The library said the person would not have faced any late fees, since the facility did away with fines in 2019.

The book arrived in the mail just weeks after a copy of the Bob Dylan record Self Portrait was returned by a person who checked it out 48 years earlier.

"We can't help wondering if [the E.E. Cummings customer] saw the news about the Bob Dylan album, and the fact that we don't charge fines anymore, and decided the time was right to come clean," Heights Libraries spokesperson Sheryl Banks told Patch.

The Elephant & The Butterfly by e. e. cummings

https://pixels.com/featured/elephant-e-e-cummings.html

Once upon a time there was an elephant who did nothing all day.

He lived by himself in a little house away at the very top of a curling road.

From the elephant’s house,this curling road went twisting away down until it found itself in a green valley where there was another little house,in which a butterfly lived.

One day the elephant was sitting in his little house and looking out of his window doing nothing(and feeling very happy because that was what he liked most to do)when along this curling road he saw somebody coming up and up toward his little house;and he opened his eyes wide,and felt very much surprised. “Whoever is that person who’s coming up along and along the curling road toward my little house?” the elephant said to himself.

And pretty soon he saw that it was a butterfly who was fluttering along the curling road ever so happily;and the elephant said: “My goodness, I wonder if he’s coming to call on me?” As the butterfly came nearer and nearer,the elephant felt more and more excited inside of himself. Up the steps of the little house came the butterfly and he knocked very gently on the door with his wing. “Is anyone inside?” he asked.

The elephant was ever so pleased,but he waited.

Then the butterfly knocked again with his wing,a little louder but still very gently,and said: “Does anyone live here,please?”

Still the elephant never said anything because he was too happy to speak.

A third time the butterfly knocked,this time quite loudly,and aksed: “Is anyone at home?” And this time the elephant said in a trembling voice: “I am.” The butterfly peeped in at the door and said: “Who are you,that live in this little house?” And the elephant peeped out at him and answered: “I’m the elephant who does nothing all day.” “Oh,” said the butterfly, “and may I come in?” “Please do,” the elephant said with a smile,because he was very happy. So the butterfly just pushed the little door open with his wing and came in.

Once upon a time there were seven trees which lived beside the curling road. And when the butterfly pushed the door with his wing and came into the elephant’s little house,one of the trees said to one of the trees: “I think it’s going to rain soon.”

“The curling road will be all wet and will smell beautifully,” said another tree to another tree.

Then a different tree said to a different tree: “How lucky for the butterfly that he’s safely inside the elephant’s little house,because he won’t mind the rain.”

But the littlest tree said: “I feel the rain already,” and sure enough,while the butterfly and the elephant were talking in the elephant’s little house away at the top of the curling road,the rain simply began falling gently everywhere;and the butterfly and the elephant looked out of the window together and they felt ever so safe and flad,while the curling road became all wet and began to smell beautifully just as the third tree had said.

Pretty soon it stopped raining and the elephant put his arm very gently around the little butterfly and said: “Do you love me a little?”

And the butterfly smiled and said: “No, I love you very much.”

Then the elephant said: “I’m so happy,I think we ought to go for a walk together you and I:for now the rain has stopped and the curling road smells beautifully.”

The butterfly said: “Yes,but where shall you and I go?”

“Let’s go away down and down the curling road where I’ve never been,” the elephant said to the little butterfly. And the butterfly smiled and said: “I’d love to go with you all the way down and down the curling road—let’s go out the little door of your house and down the steps together—shall we?”

So they came out together and the elephant’s arm was very gently around the butterfly. Then the littlest tree said to his six friends: “I believe the butterfly loves the elephant as much as the elephant loves the butterfly,and that makes me very happy,for they’ll love each other always.”

Down and down the curling road walked the elephant and the butterfly.

The sun was shining beautifully after the rain.

The curling road smelled beautifully of flowers.

A bird began to sing in a bush,and all the clouds went away out of the sky and it was Spring everywhere.

When they came to the butterfly’s house,which was down in the green valley which had never been so green,the elephant said: “Is this where you live?”

And the butterfly said: “Yes,this is where I live.”

“May I come into your house?” said the elephant.

“Yes,” said the butterfly. So the elephant just pushed the door gently with his trunk and they came into the butterfly’s house. And then the elephant kissed the butterfly very gently and the butterfly said: “Why didn’t you ever before come down into the valley where I live?” And the elephant answered, “Because I did nothing all day. But now that I know where you live,I’m coming down the curling road to see you every day,if I may—and may I come?” Then the butterfly kissed the elephant and said: “I love you,so please do.”

And every day after this the elephant would come down the curling road which smelled so beautifully(past the seven trees and the bird singing in the bush)to visit is little friend the butterfly.

And they loved each other always.

e.e. cummings’ Electric Fur. {Sex Poems 1/10}

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of your,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

~e.e. cummings

e.e. cummings

In his poetry, Cummings stressed the theme of individuality over modern conformist living. He innovated and experimented boldly in style, form, and even punctuation and grammar, signing his work “e.e. cummings.”* Cummings is best known for his peculiar approach to both capitalization and punctuation, which are seemingly placed at random, slicing up individual words as well as sentences. Many of his poems are better understood when taken as a whole on the written page. His poetry, idiosyncratic as it might first appear, grapples with something his father said in a sermon — echoing the insights of Emerson, Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson — “The Kingdom of Heaven is no spiritual roofgarden: It’s inside you.” Cummings` poetry is influenced by his Transcendentalist leanings, focusing on love and love of nature, as well as satire, and how the individual copes with the masses and the world around him. The early years Cummings was born Edward Estlin Cummings in October 1894, just outside of Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a Unitarian minister and one-time Harvard professor whose support of his son (and daughter) was assiduous. Greek and Latin came to Cummings as naturally as English, and they are given their due in some of his works: Xaipe: (“Rejoice!”) Seventy-one Poems, in Greek; Anthropos ("Mankind"), a play in Greek; and Puella Mea ("My Girl"), in Latin). Cummings graduated from Harvard with a BA in 1915 and an MA in 1916, after being published in the Harvard Monthly and the Harvard Advocate. He was counted among the "Harvard Aesthetes" that included the likes of John Dos Passos (the trilogy U.S.A., comprising The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) and S. Foster Damon. The war and beyond Much to Cummings’ chagrin, he and friend William Slater Brown, better known as the character “B” in Cummings’ novel/memoir The Enormous Room, were unceremoniously dumped into a French detention camp in a small Normandy town during World War I. The book relates the experiences Cummings and Brown endured during the three-and-a-half month-long nightmare, all due to an administrative snafu following his attempt to volunteer for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in France. Cummings and Brown were arrested on suspicion of espionage, even after they openly avowed their pacifist ideology. About the book, F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives — The Enormous Room, by E.E. Cummings . . . Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality." Significant literary works In addition to The Enormous Room, Cummings achieved notoriety for:

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) (he wanted “&” in the title; his publisher ignored his plea);

is 5 (1926), a collection of 88 poems;

Eimi (1933), a novel recounting his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, and his disillusionment with that society’s lack of intellectual and artistic freedom;

No Thanks (1935), self-published and bound at the top like a steno pad, meant as a snub to the 14 publishing houses that refused his work;
and

Fairy Tales (1965), containing four short stories published posthumously: "The Old Man Who Said `Why`," "The Elephant and The Butterfly," "The House That Ate Mosquito Pie," and "The Little Girl Named I."

Cummings, the painter Cummings was not just a one-trick pony of the avant garde. Not only did he see himself as a poet, essayist, and playwright, but as a painter, as well. His early influences began during his Harvard years with the artistic movements of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism. In particular, he admired the work of Pablo Picasso. His drawings and caricatures were published in the philosophical literary magazine, The Dial, during the 1920s.

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*About the lower case signature
Cummings signed his works (after the first few) with no capital letters (e.e. cummings), which led some to believe there were no upper case letters in his collection. That is not the case. He used capitals frequently, albeit not always conventionally. The same goes for spacing, word and line breaks, parentheses, and punctuation, not to mention grammar and syntax. The lower case signature was a kind of talisman for Cummings, a manifestation of his individuality in the world of literature. Debate went on for years as to the upper-lower case conundrum. The widow Cummings, his second wife, insists that, other than his signed work, the upper case is preferred.

e.e. cummings (u-s-history.com)