Spring is like a perhaps hand

As is typical of Cummings’s poetry, “Spring is like a perhaps hand” lacks traditional metrical or formal restraints. The poem’s lines are of variable length and there are no structuring end-rhymes. However, the poem follows a stanzaic pattern that gives it formal unity. In order to communicate the thematic importance of cycles and repetition, Cummings’s poem repeats its own form. First, the poem is organized into a single stanza block of eight lines, concluding with a single-line stanza of only three words. The poem then repeats this structure, albeit with an added line in its second long stanza, without bucking the mirrored form.

Despite eschewing any kind of organizing meter, E.E. Cummings still makes use of meter here and there to achieve a variety of effects. For instance, consider the word “perhaps” (Line 1, 10) and its unorthodox usage. Part of the word’s poetic power comes not only from its grammatical complication, but its metrical status. When the poem’s first line is metrically scanned without “perhaps,” it looks much more traditional: SPRING is LIKE a HAND / which COMES” (Lines 1-2). The opening line becomes trochaic, composed of a meter characterized by a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.