Life is Meaningless: E.E. Cummings' l(a Anonymous 11th Grade

Throughout his illustrious career, E.E. Cummings produced some of the finest poems, plays, and paintings the world has ever seen. While many are masterpieces, few are as unique as his leaf-style poems. Perhaps his most famous – and arguably his best – of those poems is the transcendent “l(a.” At the surface, “l(a” is a frustratingly incoherent jumble of letters in an equally confusing order. Yet, Cummings has crafted an exceptionally interesting and complex poem through the use of jarring syntax, brilliant diction, and profound symbolism.

The poem begins with an string of words not easily pronounced: l(a, then le. Subsequent lines, ending in –iness, are written in a very similar fashion; each line, with few exceptions, house only two letters. Although not in full-length sentences, the syntactical structure of the poem suggest to the reader that the poet wants to reinforce his poems theme of loneliness by showing the unpredictability and abject uncertainty of life, which is invariably shrouded in profound mystery. Its structure (letters pieced out into different lines, with considerable spacing in between each line) also creates a sense of separation, which has been identified as a substantial cause of loneliness. Reading the...