A Pretty How Town

E.E. Cummings exposes the negative side of conformity in his poem, "anyone lived in a pretty how town". E.E. Cummings was an important modernist poet from Massachusetts. He lived from 1894 until 1962. He was also known for using transcendental ideas in his work. For example, he used love and nature in this poem, which are both transcendental ideas. Cummings was also known for experimenting with punctuation, capitalization, and syntax in his poetry (anyone 1). In his poem, "anyone lived in a pretty how town", E.E. Cummings uses style, allegory, and themes to expose the negative side of conformist societies to change the idea that people should follow the norms.

Style is one device that Cummings used in this poem to help present his ideas about

First, Cummings did not use any capitalization throughout this poem. He did not capitalize the names “Anyone” or “Noone” or anything else in the entire poem. By doing this, the poem could be read with different meanings because they could be interpreted as names, or just generalizations. Also, there is no title for this poem, as with many of his poems, so it is known by the first line. There is also repetition featured in the poem. There are two incremental refrains in the poem. This means that the refrain is slightly different each time it is featured. One is the listing of the seasons and the other is the listing of different celestial bodies (Turco). There is also repetition of specific words within short phrases within the poem. Another stylistic device used in the poem is alliteration. Alliteration can be seen in certain phrases throughout the poem. Assonance is also shown in the poem. There is also some rhyming in the poem. Every line does not rhyme, and there is no exact rhyme scheme, but the use of rhyme throughout the poem gives it a