The Mind Is Its Own Beautiful Prisoner
The Mind Is Its Own Beautiful Prisoner - meaning Summary
Beautiful, Self-made Imprisonment
Cummings presents the mind as both captor and captive, fixating on an image that leads to a voluntary, almost ceremonial self-confinement. A surreal sequence of sensual impressions—nakedness, bodily sounds, and startling associations—turns erotic fascination into a quiet death of perception. The poem frames obsession as beautiful yet imprisoning, ending in a deliberate shutting of the eyes that reads like surrender or peaceful withdrawal into inner vision.
Read Complete Analysesthe mind is its own beautiful prisoner. Mind looked long at the sticky moon opening in dusk her new wings then decently hanged himself,one afternoon. The last thing he saw was you naked amid unnaked things, your flesh,a succinct wandlike animal, a little strolling with the futile purr of blood;your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue chalking itself,as not to make an error, with twists spontaneously methodical. He suddenly tasted worms windows and roses he laughed,and closed his eyes as a girl closes her left hand upon a mirror.
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