For life's not a paragraph and death I think is no parenthesis

I was introduced to this poem but my best friend growing up, Megan. It meant a lot to her, so much so that she decided to have a rendition of the last two lines tattooed on her wrist.

A paragraph symbol inside parenthesis

In those growing up, teenage years you learn so much about who you are from your peers and Megan was a huge influence on my life. Her taste in literature and poetry shaped mine which is how E. E. Cummings became one of my favorite poets.

So to better illustrate this poem, here's a spoken rendition.

Before you listen to it, read the poem. Then notice the different meaning you get from listening to it.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Compare this to my friend, Megan's reading below:

I love this poem so much because it contradicts what every poet strives to do which is capture the tiny details of life in the beauty of poetry. But Cummings is so correct in stating that you can never really capture life in a poem or a book or a movie because life is no paragraph, feeling comes first.

If you’ve ever read anything else by E.E. Cummings, you’ll notice that the way he designs the look of his poems has a lot to do with the meaning. Take a look at r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r- or notice the use of parenthesis in Maggie and Milly and Molly and May . 

So I think it’s cool to hear Cummings' poem read aloud. It lets you get a different aspect of it. The whole point of Cummings' poem is that paragraphs and syntax and written things can't give the true feeling of life. Feeling itself comes first. So listening to this poem almost makes more sense, to be able to ignore the syntax of it.

The part that stands out the most to me when listening to it is:

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

It has an intonation that I didn't get reading it in my head. And yet by listening to it, you miss the dash. But if you're ignoring the syntax, like Cummings suggests, does that dash even matter?

Like I've mentioned before, poetry is not my strong suit by any means. I prefer the idea of feeling the poem instead murdering to dissect (i.e. analyzing the heck out of it).

But check out my amazing analyzing skills. The whole written poem shows enjambment. But once again you miss that feature when you hear it read aloud. So what does that mean about that written poem, does the enjambment mean something? I'm inclined to believe that specific literary techniques in this poem are negligible based on the theme of the poem.

What do you think?

What differences were you able to take from the recorded version vs the written version?