Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town

            Today we derailed from the John Donne track of poems we have been on the past few class periods and looked at the poem Anyone lived in a pretty how town by E.E. Cummings. Before I start I must confess something that is making my grammar OCD go through the roof: why isn’t the whole title of the poem capitalized? Could it possibly be a typing error or is it because Cummings specifically wants it that way? Whatever the reason, it really annoys me.

            Okay back to what I was saying! I really liked this poem in comparison to Donne’s poems because Anyone who lived in a pretty how town is much easier to read, and it is much more fun to read due to its rhyming schemes and the song-like way it rolls off your tongue. Not only is it the easy reading of Anyone who lived in a pretty how town that I like, it is the message it presents.

Cummings paints the picture of a depressed town where everything is fake and everyone just goes through the motions. Throughout the poem, Cummings uses the repetition of the lines, “summer autumn winter spring” and “stars rain sun moon” to show the monotony of the town. Days and seasons pass, people go about their day and the counterfeit smiles adorn the folk’s faces. In a sense, these lines literally represent the robotic-like attitude of the townspeople E.E. Cummings is trying to portray.

Nobody shows any REAL emotion and nobody cares about anyone else in the town. The quote, “Women and men (both little and small) cared for anyone not at all” embodies the lack of compassion Cummings writes about. I also think Cummings implies that any empathy that is shown is not genuine in the slightest. Sounds like a pretty melancholic place to live!

I almost feel like parts of Anyone lived in a pretty how town can be seen in DeWitt, and more specifically, in DHS; especially the monotony. Every year, students file in and file out, each with their heads down. Nobody looks up and expresses emotion. We are like zombies in that respect! Students seem to be emotionless creatures just taking up space and making our limbs move. The lone exception is the wonderfully ecstatic Abby Ruch, who is always spewing her thoughts, emotion, and overall spontaneity. Besides Abby, everyone has their routine. They must there at that time, no exceptions. I will say that I am part of the epidemic, especially during the high tide of the fall months. Now that I ponder this, it is almost depressing. I need to inject some emotion and some laughter into each day, or I might possibly turn into a robot/zombie after all. I need a living and breathing interjection!