I saw a version of this poem by e(DWARD) e(STLIN) cummings: Lady,i will touch you with my mind. Touch you and touch and touch until you give me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene (lady i will touch you with my mind.)Touch you,that is all, lightly and you utterly will become with infinite care the poem which i do not write.
in a story once, where "lady” was changed to “boy” because a character was quoting it trying to seduce someone and that someone was a man, and I reckon he wouldn’t have appreciated being called a lady. Or at least I reckon the person doing the seducing didn’t think he’d appreciate it. “Boy, I will touch you with my mind,” he said. “Touch and touch and touch until you give me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene ...” et cetera. Interesting to see this kind of poem, where its form on the page, its spacing and punctuation, is clearly idiosyncratic on purpose, for poetic effect I suppose (sometimes I think Cummings is trying too hard, sometimes I think he’s brilliant, it really depends and I’m ambivalent about the formal stylings of this poem in particular - though not the content, the words and meanings are wonderful) - interesting to see a poem like this quoted in prose, especially in dialogue. So much of the formatting done away with entirely, and even a couple of words substituted out. I liked it.
boy, will i touch you with my mind? touch and you and touch, touch with my mind, you, until a smile, suddenly obscene yes boy, i will touch you with my mind, that is all become with infinite care touch lightly utterly become will i
And now I’ve riffed on it a bit amateurly. Does this count as a daily poem? I don’t know.
boy, i will touch you with my mind, that is all, touch you and touch and touch until a sudden smile, shyly obscene o i will touch you, only touch you with my mind lightly
I don’t know, after trying to inhabit the poem for a while it starts sounding creepy to me. The first read always gives me this sense of lightness and intimacy, like in the honeymoon first part of becoming someone’s lover when you stroke the shell of their ear out in public, at lunch with friends, for some reason I imagine with this poem a picnic in a park in the summer time and the “lady” is wearing a wide-brimmed floppy straw sun hat, all the fine cross-hatching of shadows woven intricately across her face and she’s tilted away a bit, like a 3 quarters view but away, and you can see her eyebrows and eyelids but not her eyes even though her eyes are open and suddenly she looks at you up through her eyelashes smiling and your ears are burning and it’s not the sun it’s her and you want her and you like this, this wanting of her, her wanting you, you like wanting each other and having time to want (and who knows, probably make your friends uncomfortable with sexual tension but you’re doing your best, you’ve only just started learning each other’s bodies and it’s intoxicating and addictive, you can’t stop trying to get her attention even when you won’t be able to do anything about it until later) -- It’s vivid and sunlit and gorgeous. Can I capture that without parroting the original?
, don’t you? the time when you kept being innocently beautiful in the sunlight and your ears were calling out to me to outline them with my finger with my - but i knew better not, not now, but i’d forget over and over and find myself reaching almost (my hand resting on the grass would rise up a small way off the ground and ) but you knew and you looked at me; somehow you could tell what i was doing wanted to do was waiting to do (later) ; you looked at me once through your eyelashes shyly only once, but you remember
Yes, I think I like that better. It loops, see! It’s not ee cummings, but it’s not terrible either. And it doesn’t feel creepy. Ambivalent about the formal stylings still. Well, anyway this is my daily poem. The end.