Moan

Moan - meaning Summary

Ocean Identity and Fragmentation

Cummings' brief poem conveys a fluid, fragmentary moment in which identity, sound, and the sea blur. Its broken lines and compressed words suggest movement and transformation: a moan becomes ongoing action, the female "she" of the sea shifts under a moon, and language itself dissolves into nightmarish, luminous imagery. The closing compound "wills&weres" evokes shifting selves and unstable agency, as if identity were caught mid-dance between states.