Spring is like a perhaps hand

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Spring

Spring ties the poem together. Aside from the hand and its corresponding window (which, along with the later “flower” and “air,” are vehicular denizens of a simile), the only concrete and distinct noun in the entire nineteen-line poem is “spring” (Lines 17-18). It is possible to read “Spring is like a perhaps hand” as a symbolic take on some other subject. For instance, it would be interpretively defensible to read spring as a symbol of youth, and the “people look[ing]” (Line 4) as older people watching a new generation change and transform their world, though without destroying it (“without breaking anything”) (Line 19). It is also possible to understand spring as a symbol of change itself, making Cummings’s poem into a reflection on the nature of change.

However, it is also reasonable to understand youth and change as already an inherent part of the character of spring. Whether spring is an overarching symbol or a structural motif, its importance to Cummings’s poem is undeniable. In the poem, spring proceeds from the archetypal “Nowhere” and arranges the near-mythological “New and / Old things” (Lines 3, 13-14). Despite its almost cosmological origins and powers in Cummings’s poem, spring continues to apply its powers “carefully,” arranging rather than violently transforming.

Motion & Movement

From a narrative standpoint, “Spring is like a perhaps hand” is somewhat stagnant. While the central simile provides an imagistic space in which a scene can develop, the resulting scene is fleshed-out only so far. Aside from the “flower” and “inch of air” (Lines 17, 18) introduced at the end of the poem, the inhabitants of the image are only “people star[ing] carefully” (Line 15), the “window” (Lines 4, 11), and the “perhaps hand” (Line 1) to which spring is compared. While the poem’s formal innovation, repetition, and lineation provide dynamism from a literary point of view, the scenes described in the simile remain somewhat bare.

Instead of including more imagery, developing the narrative of the scenes, or further describing his settings, E.E. Cummings uses movement and motion to keep his similes from monotony. The movement motif is introduced quickly, immediately following the poem’s first line simile set-up. The hand of spring “comes carefully / out of Nowhere” (Lines 2-3). The line break splitting the phrase emphasizes the motion first—"comes.” The poem is preoccupied with change and transformation, and these themes are communicated in terms of movement. While the changes of spring are often metamorphic, Cummings chooses to only describe its changes in terms of “arranging and changing placing / carefully” (Lines 6-7). The motion of the hand, though subtle, does a lot of legwork with regard to maintaining the energy of the poem. While growth, metamorphosis, and reproduction are common modes of spring’s changes, Cummings limits “Spring is like a perhaps hand” to discussing change in terms of movement.