Spring is like a perhaps hand

E.E Cummings - Spring is like a perhaps hand 

"Spring is like a perhaps hand". Odd, isn't it? This poem has a strange meter, and even stranger use of language to boot.

"(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)". And now parentheses as well? In fact, half of 

this poem is in multiple sets of parentheses. It has to be one of 

the strangest pices of literature of any kind that I've ever seen, 

much less had to do an assignment on. Interestingly, the entire poem is 

actually a personifying metaphor from the start. The author is using the term: 

"perhaps hand", to refer to the spring season, which he describes as creating

a window (the landscape) "into which people look ( while some stare 
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)". I believe that this poet is trying to say that 

that spring is a new thing every year, the change in temperature and weather

(essentially the hand) which removes the snow, and replaces it with grass, and rain. 

brings to life old creations such as trees (the known), and creates strange things

(new plants). " and changing everything carefully" - This is a continuation of what 

I was describing before, the personified season (the hand) removes what the hand 

of winter placed, and replaces it with new. Funny enough, the next stanza of the poem goes on to do 

exactly what I was just talking about: 

"spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything."      

Here Cummings goes into more detail, describing the way in which the hand 

goes about doing the actions described above.  Perhaps the most important 

line of the second stanza is the last: "and without breaking anything". It concludes

the poem, but almost leaves the reader hanging, as if waiting for something more

- it seems sort of unfinished. However, it does stress the fact that the hand of 

spring is very careful as it goes about it's work, replacing and renewing the old,

and bringing in the new without breaking the world. I find this to be mostly true 

in nature. With regards to poetic devices: The poem has two primary ones, personification, in that the 

spring is depicted as being a hand, and metaphor, as the hand is a metaphor for the season. 

We also observe the use of rhyme, and assonance (ex. "arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully"). And there you have it, an odd analysis of an odd poem.