View source for Pity this busy monster, manunkind

{{Short description|Poem by E. E. Cummings}}
{{lowercase title}}
{{Infobox poem
|name                = pity this busy monster, manunkind
|author              = [[E. E. Cummings]]
|first               = 1944
|country             = US
|subject             = <!-- Subject(/s)                                 -->
|form                = Sonnet<ref name="Jason">{{cite book|editor1-last=Jason|editor1-first=Philip K.|editor2-last=Irons-Georges|editor2-first=Tracy|title=Masterplots II: Poetry|date=2002|publisher=Salem Press|isbn=9781587650437|pages=3011–3013|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uqQjAQAAIAAJ|accessdate=3 January 2017}}</ref>
|meter               = Free verse
|publisher           = [[Henry Holt (publisher)|Henry Holt]] (1944)
|lines               = 14
}}
"'''pity this busy monster, manunkind'''" is a poem by American poet [[E. E. Cummings]], first published in his 1944 book ''[[1 × 1]]''. It is among his best-known poems.<ref name="Bloom">{{cite book|last1=Bloom|first1=Harold|authorlink=Harold Bloom|title=E. E. Cummings|chapter=James P. Dougherty on the Third Poetic World|date=2009|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=9781438115665|page=96|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dv1CjIIRWd0C|accessdate=13 January 2017}}</ref>
The poem laments the triumph of [[scientific progress|progress]]—defined in terms of science and technology—over nature, describing progress as a "comfortable disease", and declaring "A world of made / is not a world of born". To Cummings, the "busy monster" is a society bent on subverting nature and individual humanity, the loss of which is to be mourned. In closing, the poem's speaker suggests – with an ironic optimism – an escape to "a hell of a good [[Parallel universes in fiction|universe next door]]".<ref name="enotes">{{cite web|title=pity this busy monster,manunkind Summary|url=https://www.enotes.com/topics/pity-this-busy-monster-manunkind|website=eNotes|accessdate=13 January 2017}}</ref>
The poem relies on coined compound words and other wordplay to carry its meaning.<ref name="enotes"/><ref name="Widdowson">{{cite book|last1=Widdowson|first1=Henry|authorlink1=Henry Widdowson|title=Defining Issues in English Language Teaching|date=2003|publisher=Oxform University Press|isbn=9780194374453|page=48|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SbtqkmYNA7MC|accessdate=13 January 2017|chapter=English as an international language}}</ref> As with many of Cummings's poems, his idiosyncratic [[orthography]] and [[grammar]] provide an immediacy to the printed words.<ref name="Bloom"/> Like other [[modernist poetry|modernist]] poets, Cummings uses unusual [[typography]] to draw focus to the [[typewriter]] as an instrument of the machine age.<ref name="enotes"/>
Cummings considered the fourteen-line poem a [[sonnet]], by his own loose definition of the term.<ref name="Jason"/><ref name="enotes"/>
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/pitmonster.html Text of the poem]
{{E. E. Cummings}}
[[Category:Poetry by E. E. Cummings]]
[[Category:1944 poems]]
[[Category:Philosophical poems]]
[[Category:American poems]]
[[Category:Modernist poems]]
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