Learn how feeling is the key to writing authentically

EE Cummings teaches

Writing as Nobody-But-Yourself

Subverting the pressures to be everybody else.

1. You must fight to be yourself in a world that's trying to make you someone else.
2. Poets feel and express their feelings, which is hard to do.
3. Feeling is the road to authenticity, as it is unique to each individual.
4. We're used to speaking like everyone else, but authentic expression requires effort.
5. Writing one true sentence is worth a decade of toil.
6. Being authentic is the most wonderful life on earth.


Nobody-But-Yourself

"Since Feeling is First"

1. Paul Graham's keynote slides explore the concept of mystical verse, which reads like a love poem and is often hard to distinguish between a poet's love for a person or God. 
2. The lesson encourages readers to write from their own wellspring of love, using five stanzas and five prompts.
3. The poem by Cummings speaks of a place that is beyond any experience, and how the speaker's eyes have a silence that encloses them.
4. The poem also speaks of how life draws closed in winter, and how the speaker is pulled on by two directions.
5. Lastly, the poem speaks of the mysteries of the Beloved, and how their voice is deeper than all roses.
6. The poem encourages readers to explore the subtlety of feeling and the subtler place where feeling arises.


Write to your Beloved

A Poet's Advice

E.E. Cummings was a 20th-century American poet recognized for his unconventional use of syntax and form.

E.E. Cummings

Lessons