MusicSpoke | Artist Owned Sheet Music™

About the Score

e.e. cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" was first published in 1940. Like much of Cummings' work, the poem makes use of unusual syntax and punctuation, and deals with themes of humanity, love, and nature. At first glance, the syntax obscures the central themes of the poem, which concern two characters, named "anyone" and "noone," who live in a town filled with other nameless folk. These townspeople, who are described as "little and small," perhaps in mind as well as stature, are open in their dislike for the two outsiders, anyone and noone, whose courtship spans the course of the poem. In any other context, anyone and noone are nameless, faceless nonentities, literally devoid of individuality. But through their courtship, commitment, life and eventual death, these generic words become fully-formed humans, whose lives are rich and full of meaning. Once Cummings' surface-level quirks are understood, we see that "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is a love poem: a story of how these two ciphers transform one another into real people.

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