Loneliness: A Poem Critic

Loneliness is such a sad word, isn’t it? It is not new to us anymore, for we experience this feeling almost every day. At the end of every day, when warmth of love disappears in our life we feel loneliness in ourselves. We feel this situation wherein we feel down, experience a feeling of depression and low self-esteem.

Loneliness is a universal phenomenon because all living experiences this kind of situation wherein there is minimal of human contact physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically and socially.

Our existence also causes existence of loneliness. We all need each other and if we don’t fulfill this law of nature, we experience loneliness which is a very difficult and very unexplainable word.

What does loneliness means? Here is a poem, which does not follow poetry but it still does for it connotes a meaning. Every symbol reflects something and this something that we input in our minds are being interpreted by our minds creating a story and therefore understanding the topic more.

A poem does contain a lot of interpretations and the poem I am going to interpret will be just one of the many interpretations. The difference of our interpretations does not matter, for it expresses and lets our individual minds to work in an imaginative way. The topic will be about loneliness by E. Cummings:

l (a

le

af

fa

ll

s)

one

l

iness

Would you believe this is considered as a poem? Well you should believe that this is a poem for it expresses a meaning to the readers, which is one of the aspects of a poem.

In the first stanza, the letter “l” which means one, meets letter “a”, an article, that also means one or single. If you are only one you are lonely. The apostrophe means that they are separated from each other or they come from different worlds.

The space means that there is really loneliness going on between the two of them.

After they meet which is in the third line, the letter “a” turned into another letter which is “e” and the “l” still remains. The second person already adjusted to the environment.

In the fourth line, the letter ”l” turned to letter “a” and “e” turned to “f”. There is somewhat like an adjustment between the two. The first person adjusted to the second person while the second person also adjusted to the first person as well.

In the fifth line, there is like an exchange of something. This something could be love. There is a mutual relationship going on among them.

In the sixth line, the letter “f” and “a” then turned back into letter “l”. The letter “l” is in typewritten form which outputs the number one. The personas then go back to being alone as what is shown in the next line. This loneliness may be because of some misunderstandings or even a great conflict between the two of them.

In the eight stanza, we see that the letter “l” change to letter “s”. It means that the persona is adjusting to the environment despite the fact that his/her friend is not their anymore.

The ninth and tenth stanza shows the same meaning, one. The persona is still experiencing the sorrow of being lonely. This is also showed in the space after it.

On the last line, we see that the letter “l” changed to small letter “i” which means that it becomes humble. Together with the letter “i” are letters “n”, “e”, “s”, “s”. The persona already gained new friends. For the persona, it is really a need to be humble and adjust really to the environment to attain friends and to acquire happiness and not loneliness. Through the persona’s experiences with his previous friend, he learned a lot of things that in order for a friendship and happiness to last, he/she should be humble enough.

Loneliness is a very painful condition wherein we try to avoid it as much as possible. To disregard loneliness, we try to make new friends and adjust to the new environment. This person will try to be open and to be humble in order for him/her to meet new friends that will make him/her happy again. For a loneliness that we feel, a leaf falls for it is a self-destructing process. Once a leaf falls, all the others will also follow to fall. It is very contagious and we feel that we are not of self-worth.