ee cummings - little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where

little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where 

to find them(and found a secondhand set which click)little 

gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle 

candy but just(nude eel)now little joe lives on air 

Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry 

bulls likes People preferring Negroes Indians Youse 

n.b. ye twang of little joe(yankee)gould irketh 

sundry who are trying to find their minds(but never had any to lose) 

and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral 

history unquote might(publishers note)be entitled a wraith's 

progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral 

morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths 

(Amérique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled 

but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)

Hi everyone, happy Thursday! I figured it was about time to break out the ee cummings. In order to really understand this poem, you need some background. Joe Gould was an actual person who graduated from Harvard, and the rest of his short life on the streets begging for money, claiming that he was writing an "oral history of our time" (mentioned as "little joe gould's quote oral \\ history unquote", but mostly he was drinking a lot and doing drugs. A lot of movies, novels and poems have been based on the story of Joe Gould (go figure, doesn't sound like that interesting of a story). 

Now that we have backstory, we can delve into the poem itself. The first two lines are meant to emulate the nursery rhyme of little bo peep ("little bo peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them"). A few other points probably need clarification to:

"nude eel" - supposed to sound like new deal

"Harvard Brevis Est" - Harvard is brief (in latin)

"a myth is as good as a smile" - plays on the phrase 'a miss is as good as a mile', but also insinuates that Gould was keeping secrets

"Amérique Je T'Aime" - "America I love you", a reference to a popular song at the time under the same name.

Now that we've got the verbiage out of the way, we can get into the meat of the poem. Most of what I got out of this poem is the college reference. "Harvard Brevis Est," our time as college students is brief, and when we get out, we better not end up like "little joe gould" who doesn't have teeth to his name. That's one of the reasons I went to RIT, to have a better chance to not be jobless. I also like the last line, which basically insinuates that it's much more fun to be the fooler than the fool. I hope you all end up liking this poem as much as me, even with the insane second stanza. Until I post again,

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman