“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” – E.E. Cummings

Link to poem: https://poets.org/poem/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond, by E.E. Cummings is a modernist poem about deep emotional connection and love. The love that is clearly in the present can be interpreted in two different ways. The love can be seen as romantic or it can be seen as a familial/parental love that two family members feel for each other. I tend to favor the first option. This is for a few reasons but the most obvious to me is the continuing symbol of flowers and roses. Roses are a common symbol for romance and love and there are multiple references to these symbols throughout the 5 stanza poem. For example the line “as when the heart of this flower imagines” and “you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens” both reference flowers. If this poem were to be for a family member I feel that this symbol would not have been so prevalent. Additionally, I do not feel like a family member would tell their parent or fellow family member that “the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”. Not only is the symbol of roses apparent in this line but is also a very romantic and passionate statement. Additionally, the line contains personification and metaphor. The speaker personifies the eyes of his lover as having a voice and then goes on to state that the voice is deeper than roses. Moving onto the title, it is quite odd. It contains no capitalized letters and it is somewhat lengthy. For the meaning of the title itself I feel that the place the speaker has “never traveled” is love and having such a deep connection with a person. The “gladly beyond” at the end shows that the speaker may be in love with this person but wants to go beyond their current relationship and take the next step, whatever that may be. The lack of capitalization in the title shows that the current relationship that the speaker has with the person they love may be casual and more of a friendship. The lack of capitalization hints at a lack of formality of the relationship showing that this poem may be a confession of love poem. This poem relies completely on enjambed lines. There is not a single end stop. I feel this is because the poem is the speaker almost pouring out all of his feelings to the person he loves and since he has been holding it back so long he doesn’t stop he just continues to pour out his feelings. The close it gets to an end-stop are semi-colons but even then the thoughts connected by semi-colons flow together very well. Because of that, I see those as more of caesuras meant to be paused on but soon continuing on. I have already touched on the speaker a bit but I feel that they are a very passionate and loving person who is deeply in love with a friend or acquaintance of theirs. The structure of the poem is very simple. 5 stanzas written in free verse. There is no unique format that the poem follows which again reinforces the idea that the poem is not supposed to be incredibly flashy it’s supposed to be an informal declaration of love. Something that is interesting to me is that the last stanza is in brackets and that is the only stanza to do that. I feel that is because it is the first time that the speaker expresses uncertainty. The whole poem they are discussing how the person makes them feel but the beginning of this stanza puts all of it into question-begging why that is: “(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;”

Glory – Gbenga Adesina

https://poets.org/poem/glory

The poem “Glory” is about the value of so many things in life. According to the Gbenga Adesina’s notes, the poem is for Adesina’s late father. The poem is a very beautiful and thoughtful tribute to his father. The poem is focused on the word “glory”. As I interpreted it in this poem, glory is a stand-in for the action of praising something and cherishing it. There is a repetition of the term “glory of” which enforces this idea and shows the praising nature of the phrase. In that sense, giving glory to things like thirst, nature, and death reveals the deeper meaning of this poem. This tribute to his dad is about the value of life and of death. Adesina reveals to the audience that he feels that no matter the state of anything- dead or alive, beautiful or ugly- everything in this world deserves to be given glory. I feel that the saying “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” connects very well with the message of the poem. The phrase “when he died, closed inside his grave, and opened even more brightly inside me.” makes me believe that his father’s death led him to have a much more understanding and accepting view of the cycle of life and death. Almost like his father’s death made him appreciate every inch of life and even death that our world has to offer because in the end, even though beautiful things end, that does not mean they are not still beautiful and worthy of praise. Something else that is worth mentioning is the mention of the “dark horses”. Since it is mentioned right after the reference to his father’s death, I feel like they represent Adesina’s memory of his father after his death. This is because it feels like the horses are representative of how his father’s soul may still be symbolically still roaming in Adesina’s thoughts and mind. I also noticed an interesting comparison in the first line of the poem. Adesina mentions “Glory of plums, femur of Glory.” I feel like this line while assigning value to nature, also compares life to death. The plum in this case is representative of life and nature while the mention of a femur reminds us of skeletons and death. This comparison once again enforces the praise that needs to be given to both features of life and features of death. Something else important to mention is the line “Glory of the Latin”. This line I feel adds another layer to what Adesina believes should be cherished and praised. I feel that he is also saying that human culture and society need to be worshiped, despite its mistakes and flaws. I reached this conclusion because the mentioning of Latin specifically felt like a strange choice but it makes sense considering how Latin is a dying language and was the language of Rome, a now fallen and dead empire. In this line, Abesina again shows the value of life and death while also showing the value of present or dead human culture. Overall, this poem is a touching tribute to Adesinas father which manages to thoughtfully pay homage and “glory” to his father while still making a powerful statement on the value of loss, life, and death. In a way, we can all try and think of death like a dark horse, something seen as mysterious yet elegant. The poem may be trying to tell us not to fear death and instead to simply accept its existence and praise what we have before and after death arrives.

“Paradise” – Gbenga Adesina

https://www.splitthisrock.org/poetry-database/poem/paradise

“Paradise” by Gbenga Adesina is a poem which focuses on the state of a desert town tucked away in the Sahara Desert. Although that may be what is described in the poem, the descriptions of the town are symbolic of deeper themes and meanings. At the end of the day this poem is about the culture of the area around the city of Paradise. Before the narrator arrives in Paradise they note the activites and qualities of the locals, such as how the farmers “knew the stiff silk and red heart muscle of watermelons”. This line implies that the people in this area have a deep connection with the land. This is evidenced by refering to watermelons as a “red heart muscle” implying that it is a muscle in a bigger organism that is the land. It is mentioned how the farmers hold the fruits close to them and they listen to the fruits, again employing a metaphor to show the land and its fruits value to the people of this region. Moving on our narrator meets a donkey named “Happiness” I feel that it is named this way to contrast the peoples love for life and their surrondings to the rough and desolate landscape. There is a major transition at the line “We arrived at a city called Paradise.” It marks the change from the outer area of the city to the city itself. Something I find very interesting is how the setting and environment does not shift all too much, it is more a shift of descriptions than setting. When I think of going from a farming-based, rough terrained environemnt, to a city named “Paradise” you would almost expect for the setting to become a lot more alluring and peaceful, however we are immediatly greeted with the phrase “Its gate and city walls were burnt in the last century and rebuilt only in a dream”. This makes it clear to me that Adesina wants us to know that despite the cities name, this city is no where near a stereotypical Paradise, but may instead be a paradise in some other way that has yet to be descibred. I feel this is done in order to show that “paradise” doesnt have to mean everything you could ever want and very nice things but that paradise is in the eye of the beholder. “Praise the emptiness” is an interesting line, it implies that Paradise, like the surronding area, is very empty with not a lot going on, again challenging the stereotypical city in the middle of nowhere which is giant with a lot of activites and comotion. The narrator is offered water and it is mentioned the wells there are older than the country. This may be hinting at the fact that this is a young country they are in which could have recently gained independence and/or been in a war considering the city walls which were burnt “in the last century”. Personificiation is used very well in the phrase “Sorrow has such beautiful wings.” It is in reference to describing how the desert they stand in used to be a lake and it adds on to the idea that there may have been a recent war in the area which brought devistation to the city of Paradise which would explain its broken down and empty state. The final line “Here, the desert will eat your child” is powerful and it wraps the poem up extremely well. It ties back to the brutality and roughness of the desert they are in, and gives insights onto the struggles of the people of the area who may be facing difficult times after a war. The main point the narrator is getting across is that the beauty and true reason it is paradise is because of the culture and people who call it home.

Gbenga Adesina

Gbenga Adesina is a Nigerian poet and essayist. He received his MFA from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. Adesina has received fellowships and support from Poets House, New York, the Fine Arts Work Center and the Norman Mailer Center. He’s completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the intersection of poetry and postcolonial studies at Florida State University where he was the Interviews Editor of the Southeast Review.