Question: What is the Link between e.e. cummings’ "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and David Fincher’s "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"?
This is a comparative piece I wrote way back in 2008, when I had just arrived in Kuala Lumpur and seen Fincher's film. At the time I was also teaching Cummings, and it had instantly struck me that the film and the poem had a lot in common. Though I discovered later that the poem could have a different interpretation from the one I have given below, the comparison still stands. The full poem can be found here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15403 Tentative answer: More than half a century separates the publication of "anyone lived in a pretty how town" (1940) and the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), starring the incomparable Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The former is a maddeningly unorthodox poem that makes linguistic purists wince; the latter is a wildly imaginative portrait of a man whose life defies linearity. Neither the poem nor the film appeals to those who have been conditioned to think that life comes in easily ...