“since feeling is first” is one of the many poems in which Cummings champions emotion over reason, logic, and convention. We can look at some of these other works to better understand the poet’s advocacy of “feeling.”
In “The Syntax of Things: A (Re)Examination of Cummings’s Anti-intellectual Bias,” Kristen Leatherwood identifies the following works as examples of Cummings’s “emphasis on feeling over reason.” In poetry, pieces such as “The Ballad of the Scholar’s Lament” frame emotion as something that competes against the responsibilities of the intellectual: “Of what avail is all my mighty lore? / I beat my breast, I tear my hair, I scream: / ‘Behold, I have a Herculean chore. / How shall I manage to compose a theme?’” In “may my heart be open to little,” Cummings admires nature’s freedom from the confines of logic: “may my heart be open to little / birds who are the secret of living / whatever they sing is better than to know.” In prose, too, Cummings argues that feeling is superior to reason. In his autobiography The Enormous Room, he states that “there are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them.” In one of his six nonlectures, Cummings claims that “not to completely feel is thinking.”
Throughout his career, Cummings continuously made the argument that feeling and thinking are antithetical, and that one should prioritize the former—not only in romance, but in all facets of life. Considering the radical, raw, sensual, and jarring qualities of many of Cummings’s poems, it seems quite natural that the poet was such a passionate advocate of emotion. What complicates this stance, however, is the intimate relationship that Cummings’s poetry has with syntactical and philosophical constructs, and how heavily it depends upon an understanding of logic, reason, and convention. This leads us to perhaps the central paradox of Cummings' poetry. Is Cummings, a master of “syntax,” consistent with his own argument?
