2. The Writer was wondering why could be in earth people
always talk about the equality between woman and man? Do
men take women's rights away? Do men prevent women on
doing something? If they do, it's not because men abandon
the fairness. It is just because there are distinctions between
man and woman. These women, who are screaming at
the top of their lung asking for the equality, don't really
completely understand who they are. It is agreed that
men are physically stronger and women are the
weaker vessel. But God is fair. He embodies the
dignity, which precisely more powerful, within
women's fragility and femininity.
Keywords: Power, femininity, fragility
3. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing
poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the
Cambridge Latin High School. In 1917, Cummings
published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight
Harvard poets. At the time of his death, September 3, 1962,
he was the second most widely read poet in the United
States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills
Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
4. STANZA 1 TO 2 STANZA 3 TO 5
Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly
beyond
any experiences, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which
enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too
near
your slightest look easily will enclose me
thought I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as
spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first
rose
Or if your wish be to close me, I and
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending;
Nothing which we are perceive in this world
equals
The power of your intense fragility: whose
texture
Compels me with the color of its countries,
Rendering death and forever with each
breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
And opens; only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper than all
roses)
No body, not even the rain, has such small
hands
5. I.I Imagery
Imagery seems to be everywhere in the poem and nowhere in
particular. It is often considered along with other commonly
used terminology
(figurative language; symbol, metaphor, etc), the boundaries
being fuzzy.When figurative
language (like metaphor or simile) provides a picture that
evokes any of the senses, that is imagery.
“Imagery may be defined as the representation through
language of sense experience. Poetry appeals directly to our
senses, of course, through its music and rhythm, which we
actually hear when it is read aloud.” (Perrine, Sound and
Sense, 1988:54)
6. Visual Imagery
When we are reading a poem, there must be some parts
when the author tries to encourage the poem by using an
imagery. For example “silence covers a starless night
beautifully, no motion, no sounds, only the wind that
drags the fallen leaves away and the sing of owl witness
its beauty”, night and fallen leaves can be caught by the
eyes, that is the author uses a visual imagery.
7. I.2 Figurative Language
”figurative language is any way of saying something
other than the ordinary way, and some rhetoricians have
classified asmany as 250 separate figures … figurative
language is language that cannot be taken literary”
(Perrine, 1998:65).
8. Simile
A simile is an easy way to compare two things, so examples
of simile poems include any poem that makes comparisons
using the words "like" or "as." As long as the comparison is
one thing to another, whether or not the two things being
compared are actually alike or not, you can consider it a
simile poem.
9. Laurence Perrine explains in Sound and Sense
(1984:83), “a symbol may be roughly as something that
means more than what it is”. The use of symbol can be
seen from ‘Road’ word of Robert Frost’s poem, The
Road Not taken below:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
This is not just an ordinary road, these roads are some
choice that must be chosen and he cannot just rewind
his life if something goes wrong in order to take the
other choice.
10. III. Power
‘somewhere I have never travelled’, tries to give us another
point of view of women’s power, and reveal an extraordinary
hidden power that his lover possesses.
11. Imagery
Visual Imagery
Silence and gesture (stanza 1, line 1-4)
In the first stanza, ‘silence’ is a visual imagery because it
needs the sense of sight to notice silence. It tells that
Cummings found silence by looking at his lover’s eyes. The
word ‘gesture’ also considered as a visual imagery because it
is caught by sense of sight. He sees the gesture which
enclose him.
12. look and open (stanza 2, line 5-8)
The writer wants to tell the readers about the
gaze of his lover by using the visual imagery.
The visual imagery can be seen in the second
stanza from the word ‘look’. We can see that
someone has a slightest look by looking at his
eyes. Another visual imagery is the word
‘open’. The writer sees that his lover opened
himself one by one.
13. color (stanza 4, line 15-16)
The word ‘color’ is considered as a visual imagery because
we have to see which color that some thing had. In this
stanza, the writer has some memorable impression of the
certain color of the countries.
14. Closes, opens and voice (stanza 4, line 17-20)
There are several visual imageries in the fourth
stanza above; they are ‘closes’, ‘opens’, and ‘voice’.
The words ‘closes’ and ‘opens’ describe what the
writer sees about his lover. Only something in him
understands what closes and opens mean.
The visual imagery can also be seen from the word
‘voice’. It is also considered as a visual imagery
because voice, in the last stanza above, means
some sounds that the eyes can tell.
15. Figurative Language
Simile
your slightest look easily will enclose me
thought I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose (stanza 2, line 5-8)
In the second stanza, the writer compares himself with fingers. He
closes himself like a folded finger, but in the next line he comparing
his lover with a spring. She always open himself side by side like a
spring opens her first rose. This stanza explains that the writer’s
lover always understand him no matter what.
16. Or if your wish be to close me, I and
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending; (stanza 3,
line 9-12)
The writer compares himself with the heart of the
flower in the third stanza. This stanza describes the
imagination of the writer when his lover’s wish is
to let him down, it will be like snow which
descending carefully everywhere.
17. Symbol
Eyes
Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experiences, your eyes have their silence: (stanza 1, line 1-
2)
You could interpret it to mean that unexplored place the
speaker is heading into the depths of his lover’s eyes. Make
them seen more mysterious and unknownable. Because all
eyes must be silent, they can not talk at all. But there is the
way it can. You have probably heard somebody say that “the
eyes are window to the soul” you can look down into a
person’s eyes and see what they’re feeling and thinking.
18. Roses
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose (stanza
2, line 7-8 )
The already obvious love symbolism is taken into to an
erotic place with all this talk of spring “touching
skillfully, mysteriously.” And generally according to
popular perception, we relate women to flowers. So we
assume that speaker in this poetry is a male. So “her
first rose” can interpreted that someone who had her
first love.
19. Power
‘somewhere I have never travelled’is the first line of this
poem. It indicates that the speaker of this poem tries to bring
us into ‘somewhere’ that he has taken or will take. Though
the destinations of his journey are unrevealed, the speaker
probably know that it is a journey toward the happiness as it
said in next line ‘gladly beyond any experiences’.
20. Edward Estlin Cummings’s “Somewhere I have never
travelled” is one of poems which describe the life of
love in pretty-male dominating in 1930’s. From the
analysis, we conclude that the speaker in this poem is a
deep guy. We can learn about how to love someone with
all sincerity in different way. Generally, we must be love
someone cause her/his physics at start. But in this poem
Cumming describe a condition that someone who love
by the deep mysteriousness of her love. He does not
quite know who she is, and it is the mystery that keeps
him hooked. However, most of critics the poems always
sort of assume that it is a male describing himself in
typically feminine terms, and all the thing that he want
to do over her only seems to make her love him more.
