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Works of literature are for me like buildings. Some are elegant edifices of dizzying height and rococo embellishment; others are simple A-frames or lean-tos with welcome mats. Some are easy to enter; others have sealed doors that frustrate my tool kit of intellectual lock picks and present no interstices into which to pry with my crowbar.

Most of E. E. Cummings' poems have been for me curious and playful structures that have left me on their porches, searching for the doorbell. Occasionally one of his poems' doors pops open and the lights blink on. His poem that most refer to by the opening line "l(a" is one such example of which I dare to hazard an analysis.

l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l

ines s

This particular building is a structure of concrete; that is to say a concrete poem. The shape of the poem is actually its subject. The poem is shaped like the first letter of the first line - letter, which in old-fashioned typography, was not only a lower-case el but also the digit representing the number one.

A commonplace notion of poetry is that it is meant to be read aloud. Cummings throws that idea out the door. This and many other of his poems cannot be read aloud. The key word "loneliness" is broken by a parenthesis containing fragments which, when assembled, read "a leaf falls." There is something lonely about the image of a single falling leaf. Archibald MacLeish, in "Ars Poetica," created the image of "an empty doorway and a fallen leaf" and made of it an objective correlative for all the history of grief." But instead of trying to evoke sadness or sympathy, Cummings is playing with us and making his poem an elaborate typographical pun. The entire poem looks like the number one - the loneliest of numbers.

Notice the number of times that the letter "l" (simultaneously the digit one) appears in the poem. The number is spelled out in the seventh line. The narrowness of the poem and its spacing support the downward motion of the falling leaf until it comes to rest in the climactic and longest line "iness" which conveys the state of being first person singular, with the lower-case "i" suggesting the sense of insignificance of a lonely person. But there is more.

Taking it from the top: line one begins with the number one, a parenthesis mark that, I suggest, looks like a side view of a falling leaf. Next to my leaf is the letter a - the indefinite singular article in English. Also, ignoring the leaf for a moment, "la" is the feminine singular definite article in French. The next line

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