E. E. Cummings

The Bed Is Not Very Big

The Bed Is Not Very Big - meaning Summary

Tenderness Amid Grotesque

The poem compresses an intimate bedroom scene into a compact, surreal tableau. Domestic and bodily images—pillow, sheet, a small head—are mingled with grotesque, playful metaphors and sudden religious reference. The result is a tension between tenderness and mockery, closeness and disquiet, where familiar objects become uncanny and the speaker’s vision slips between affectionate observation and unsettling, dark humor.

Read Complete Analyses

the bed is not very big a sufficient pillow shoveling her small manure-shaped head one sheet on which distinctly wags at times the weary twig of a neckless nudity (very occasionally budding a flabby algebraic odour jigs et tout en face always wiggles the perfectly dead finger of thitherhithering gas. clothed with a luminous fur poilu a Jesus sags in frolicsome wooden agony).

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