Pity this busy monster, manunkind

pity this busy monster, manunkind
by E. E. Cummings
First published in	1944
Country	US
Form	Sonnet[1]
Meter	Free verse
Publisher	Henry Holt (1944)
Lines	14

"pity this busy monster, manunkind" is a poem by American poet E. E. Cummings, first published in his 1944 book 1 × 1. It is among his best-known poems.^[2]

The poem laments the triumph of progress—defined in terms of science and technology—over nature, describing progress as a "comfortable disease", and declaring "A world of made / is not a world of born". To Cummings, the "busy monster" is a society bent on subverting nature and individual humanity, the loss of which is to be mourned. In closing, the poem's speaker suggests – with an ironic optimism – an escape to "a hell of a good universe next door".^[3]

The poem relies on coined compound words and other wordplay to carry its meaning.^[3][4] As with many of Cummings's poems, his idiosyncratic orthography and grammar provide an immediacy to the printed words.^[2] Like other modernist poets, Cummings uses unusual typography to draw focus to the typewriter as an instrument of the machine age.^[3]

Cummings considered the fourteen-line poem a sonnet, by his own loose definition of the term.^[1][3]

References

1. Jason, Philip K.; Irons-Georges, Tracy, eds. (2002). Masterplots II: Poetry. Salem Press. pp. 3011–3013. ISBN 9781587650437. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
2. Bloom, Harold (2009). "James P. Dougherty on the Third Poetic World". E. E. Cummings. Infobase Publishing. p. 96. ISBN 9781438115665. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
3. "pity this busy monster,manunkind Summary". eNotes. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
4. Widdowson, Henry (2003). "English as an international language". Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxform University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780194374453. Retrieved 13 January 2017.

External links

• Text of the poem