The Phonograph’s Voice Like a Keen Spider Skipping
The Phonograph’s Voice Like a Keen Spider Skipping - meaning Summary
Urban Moments and Startled Intimacy
Cummings presents a fragmented urban snapshot: a phonograph, street characters, pigeons and a cat. Ordinary details register alongside the speaker’s sudden existential uncertainty—wondering if he is truly alive—and a shift into intimate, almost violent closeness. The poem moves from civic clutter and quiet loneliness to an intrusive personal presence, where invincible Nearness
forces an uneasy, ambiguous laughter from the beloved’s eyes.
(the phonograph’s voice like a keen spider skipping quickly over patriotic swill. The,negress,in the,rocker by the,curb,tipping and tipping,the flocks of pigeons. And the skil- ful loneliness,and the rather fat man in bluishsuspenders half-reading the Evening Something in the normal window. and a cat. A cat waiting for god knows makes me wonder if i’m alive(eye pries, not open. Tail stirs.) And the. fire-escapes— the night. makes me wonder if,if i am the face of a baby smeared with beautiful jam or my invincible Nearness rapes laughter from your preferable,eyes
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