America and Her Automobile

There’s a song by Lisa McCormick called “Cars, Cars, Cars, Relationships,” and it’s a song about exactly what it promises to be. As a high schooler, I often think about little else other than cars and relationships. Karen Alkalay-Gut of Tel Aviv University writes concerning these topics on E.E. Cummings’ controversial poem “she is Brand” in her essay “Sex and the Single Engine: E.E. Cummings' Experiment in Metaphoric Equation.” Alkalay-Gut opens by pointing out a common occurrence in Western culture; the connection between women and automobiles. This connection forms the entire basis of “she is Brand,” a basis whose place in our modern world Alkalay-Gut questions. Our modern world is much advanced from even Cummings’ recent times, especially in regard to gender equality and general concern towards speaking (and writing) sensitively. Alkalay-Gut addresses this aspect of “she is Brand” in the later half of her essay, but begins by inspecting the specific ways in which Cummings utilizes the “metaphorical equivity” between women and cars. Alkalay-Gut gives specific examples of how Cummings’ use of pronouns and common automotive terminology of the 1920’s can be read as metaphors for intimate human relations, as well as citing numerous studies which exhibit the commonly accepted connection between women and the automobile in parts of early twentieth century culture other than poetry. While Alkalay-Gut poses a very strong argument for “she be Brand’s” unacceptability in the modern age, she is also able to separate praise for the skill with which Cummings is able to construct this metaphor from her criticism with its substance. This, just like the separation of church and state, I believe to be an important practice for us to keep in mind. Art is art, and artists are people. The two are not the same, and only mix in the moment the art is created and when it is absorbed by the viewer, two moments which should always be kept entirely separate.

Works Cited

Alkalay-Gut, Karen. “Sex and the Single Engine: E.E. Cummings' Experiment in Metaphoric Equation.” In Journal of Modern Literature, 254-258. Indiana University Press, 1996. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831481?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 20 February, 2021.

Cummings, E.E. “she is Brand.” In E. E. Cummings: Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy, 77-78. New York: Liveright, 1994.