At first glance, the poem “this is a rubbish of human rind” by E.E. Cummings seems like your average poem, and that’s because it is. The poem has four stanzas that are evenly sized and its structure is very similar to every other average poem that ever existed. There is no unique punctuation

or spacing and the rhyme scheme is nothing special. The thing that distinguishes this poem is its cryptic meaning. During my first read, I was overwhelmed with many questions. What is “this”? Is the “this” from each stanza the same? What is the significance of the first line of each stanza rhyming? To answer all these questions, I read through the poem again. I noticed a few small things like the rhymes that appear at the end of every stanza, but nothing substantial, so I reread closely, one stanza at a time.

The poem’s first line already requires a close look: what is rubbish of human rind? Rubbish usually refers to waste or something that is trash and rind is the tough outer skin of certain fruits, so I concluded that “human rind” is just human skin or the outer flesh layer of a human. After taking apart that phrase, I determined that “this” is the waste of human skin, which makes no sense. Because the literal meaning made no sense, I decided to try to determine the plot of the first stanza as it might give me clues as to what “this” is. My first thought was war. Because of prior research on E.E. Cummings, I know he worked as a medic in WW1 for some time, so maybe this first stanza was inspired by the horrors he saw in WW1 as a medic and the “rubbish of human rind” is a dead body. The rest of the stanza fits with the war plot as the dead person could’ve been holding a picture of loved ones when they died. The second thing that comes to mind is a break-up. Maybe the speaker is describing a person going through a breakup and the “rubbish of human rind” is the person going through the breakup that is down in the dumps and not doing anything. If the person going through the breakup is sitting at home feeling sorry for himself, the speaker could describe him as a waste. The clue that led me to this plot theory was the photograph with the word love underlined. Since I couldn’t decide which plot theory was better, I concluded that “this” referred to a person and moved on to the second stanza.

The first question that came to mind when I read the second stanza was is the girl mentioned in the same person mentioned in the first stanza or are they completely different. I determined that this girl was a completely different person because both the situations I mentioned dont fit in the second stanza. Since the subjects of each stanza are different, I determined that the “this” mentioned in each stanza is different as well. The phrase “who died in her mind” makes me think that the girl mentioned is depressed or going through some kind of mental problem. The mention of the gadgets purring and gangsters dining while the girl is suffering alludes to the idea that the world goes on no matter what a person is going through.

The third stanza is trickier to understand compared to the first two. The speaker tells us that “this” is a deaf dumb church. What does even mean? My first thought was that a deaf dumb church was a church that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. The purpose of churches is to transform society into a better and more peaceful place to live, and maybe the church doesn’t do that, which is why it is called deaf, dumb, and blind. The “if in its soul” could be some sort of uncertainty within the church, which is why it is not doing its job properly. The cause of this uncertainty could be the “hole in its life” where something is missing, perhaps something that could get rid of the uncertainty and help the church to fulfill its job of uplifting again. During my first read, I knew that bells tolling represents death, but I didn’t know what the old vines meant. However, after a quick google search on the symbolism of vines, I determined that the vines represent some sort of connection to god, which is what churches are all about.

The fourth stanza was a little less cryptic than the third. The subject of this stanza is a “dog of no known kind”, perhaps a dog of unknown breed. The speaker states that the dog has two different colored eyes, one white and one black. At first, I didn’t understand the meaning behind the multicolored eyes, but then I realized that one white eye and one black eye would mean that the dog only sees in black and white. If that is the case, the rest of the stanza delivers a clear message, the dog is spiritually lost because it only sees the world in black and white.

When analyzing this poem as one cohesive piece, there is less relation between stanzas compared to most poems. The only things that the stanzas have in common are the “this” at the start of each stanza and a meaning behind each stanza. After analyzing each stanza, it is clear to me that each stanza portrays a different cruel message. The first portrays the message that the world can be very cruel. The second portrays the message that even if you are going through something terrible, the world will still go on. The third portrays the message that uncertainty can lead one off their path and leave them with something missing. The fourth portrays that if you see the world in black and white, you will become spiritually lost in the world. You will stray from your path like the deaf dumb church, be ignored like the girl who died in her mind, and suffer like the rubbish of human rind.