PoetryPoetryLine 1Here the speaker of the poem introduces the four characters. Notice how the repetition of the “m” sound in each of the girls names gives this line a musical quality, like a melody, and makes it sound like a nursery rhyme. Such repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words is called alliteration and serves to create among each of the alliterated words an especially musical relationship. In essence, each of the girls names shares this “m” quality, and it is implied, at least on some level, that each of the girls is the same or similar. The names blend together and do not distinguish themselves from one another, and each girls character and personality is similarly undistinguished. cummings commonly took liberties with basic stylistic conventions and does so here with each of the characters names, which he does not capitalize. Capitalization is traditionally used to denote proper names and to signify respect for the individual, it is arguable that by not capitalizing names here cummings is suggesting that each character is not wholly an individual. Nevertheless, the rest of the poem, as the reader will see, serves to distinguish each of the characters from one another and to give the reader a clearer picture of how they are each individual and unique.
Line 2This line then sets the scene. The reader is told that all four of the characters have gone to the beach ostensibly to “play.” Notice how cummings uses parentheses to set apart “to play one day.” Parentheses traditionally serve to set apart information that is not vital to the central meaning of a sentence, and in this sense the speaker of the poem is telling the reader that the reasons why the girls went is not particularly important. More important, when one notes that the word “day” rhymes with “may” in the first line, one might argue that the parentheses serve to separate this ornament from the more important thematic material of the poem. In other words, the parentheses point out that the end of this line serves only to complete the poetic structure and that, in a sense, this poetic structure is not particularly important. This is important when one recognizes how the poem diverges almost completely from this rhyme scheme in later stanzas.
Lines 3–4Here the reader learns that one of the characters, maggie, finds a shell while she is playing. As is done with shells, she places it to her ear and hears the sound it makes, the sound of the ocean. This sound is so pleasingly musical that she becomes engrossed and forgets herself and all her worries and “troubles.” Notice how the word “troubles” does not rhyme with “sang” and thus disrupts the rhyme scheme begun in the couplet. The reader expects the speaker to tell him/her that maggie was so taken with the shells song that “she couldnt remember her name.” This would at least create a slant rhyme between “sang” and “name.” Instead, having set up in the reader an expectation as to how the poem will play out, cummings diverges from the expected in order to upset the readers sense of order. One expects the poem to continue its nursery-rhyme-like rhyme scheme, but instead cummings undercuts this expectation with impunity. One gets “troubles.” The effect is that maggie, as an individual, is characterized not by her “name” but by her concerns and worries, by what she cares about. What these worries might concern is left un-said, but what one learns is that “playing” for maggie means getting away from such concerns and being enveloped in the sensory experience of the ocean and the beach: it means losing herself.
Lines 5–6This couplet depicts the second character, milly, and describes what she finds while playing. Note that she “befriends” the star, presumably a starfish “stranded” on the beach at low tide. In other words, play for milly consists of finding and/or building friendships. In this case, however, the friend she finds, the star, has “five languid fingers.” Languid means inert or sluggish or spiritless or lifeless, and it is implied that milly has struck up a friendship with a spiritless, lifeless creature. This then is presumably less than ideal, or at the very least one-sided. One could argue even that this suggests how desperate milly is for friendship and say that she herself is, in this sense, “languid.” That is to say she is somehow lifeless or incapable of creating
”befriends, and that, therefore, this is more ideal/perfect of friendship. As we have seen, our “ideal” model of friendship has some of the worst assumptions of a romantic or existentialist, and most people who find (e.g.) “like and+2 in the book are better off. One could consider this the case only given that there are other, more reasonable forms of friendship for every other kind of relationship (a friendship made at least with some kind of partner). A third possibility is that because a friendship is too idealistic to be an actual one, it probably goes against the spirit of the writer’s ideal. This would require that all of these relationships start with a certain amount of affection, or at least a certain amount of “just the friendship” which would be necessary to form, or at least facilitate, a bond based on such mutual interest, a real love of who we were together, or a genuine hope to have someone else, or an open letter by the love (e.g., one with whom we could actually share time, or even space, and thus perhaps more easily and more often together).„befriends+2. The way we conceive languid means the ability of a friendship to build to a certain level of intimacy.befriends (at least of the kind we have described): it is one factor that influences the way a friendship builds, and the influence which can drive that build, is also a one factor. The relationship is built on these two and not on other factors. Such a relationship takes place when the only other factors at play are (and here we are talking about a relationship that begins with a romantic relationship, not a psychological one, as we have discussed above). By itself, any relationship is built on these two only factors; and, of course, there are other factors at play too. But those other factors, which are not mutually exclusive, can in turn force the structure of a friendship. These factors are usually quite straightforward when they emerge naturally. As for the other factors we have described, they do not exist. The two relationships we have looked at can in turn be built on the same factors, and the structure of our friendships is almost entirely built on them. If friendship is just like any other relationship, it must have the same basic elements, and these elements must be the same, which makes it not quite so easy to get our work together (that is, until we can build a romantic or existential friendship) that would be impossible. Indeed, for many “libertarian” humanists, “equality” is inextricably linked with the concept of “social justice”—and that is precisely what most of humanistic humanism thinks it is. In this way, libertarian humanists think that no society has “equality” but what is absolutely necessary for “progress”. The idea that any society has free will to do what