Re: They Shake the Mountains When They Dance

At the end of Kevin's post, he asks whether looking at the solider-cannon perspective changes the meaning of e.e. cummings poem "the boys i mean are not refined." I read Kevin's post and reread the poem and I did see the poem differently, but I'm not quite sure the meaning changed that much. When I first read the poem, I had a picture in my head of 'the boys' based on the way they were characterized, but still saw them as simple boys who were 'not refined.' After reading the post, I reread the poem and the picture I saw changed, the boys became boys in uniform, and the vulgarity of the boys became metaphors for cannons and destruction. I saw a different picture, but the meaning didn't really change, in both pictures once again, these 'boys are not refined', and I think that is the point, whether you know the context it was written in or not.