Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town is a beautiful piece of poetry by E.E. Cummings. The poem begins by introducing the character called “anyone” who lives in a nice little town. Bells are mentioned, which are presumably church bells that mark important events in someone’s life (weddings, funerals, etc.). The other people in the town seem to live their own lives without paying much attention to anyone. The poet marks the passage of time throughout the poem by repeatedly listing the seasons (in a different order each time) and writing “sun, moon, stars, rain”. The children guess that no one (a new character) is in love with anyone, but they think less about other characters and more about themselves as they grow older. As the seasons continue to change, no one falls more and more in love with anyone, evidenced by the line “anyone’s any was all to her”. The other people of the…show more content… This poem could take a cynical tone and represent that as time passes, each person’s life has the same repetitive, cyclical nature. This belief makes one person’s little moments of happiness seem insignificant in the larger picture. With this interpretation, the poem seems to view life as only a hectic cycle of seasons, births, marriages, and deaths. The love between someone and anyone is presented as somethings that is important to them, but is actually fleeting and insignificant. However, a different interpretation could find the meaning to be that people should enjoy life because it is fleeting. This interpretation could show that even though anyone and no one eventually die, they made the most of their lives and are happy together, which is what we should strive for. In conclusion, the themes of human mortality and the passage of time contribute to a depressing meaning that individuals and their lives are insignificant and a lighter theme that people should make the most of their lives and strive for what brings them
