a thrown a

~ E.E. Cummings *

a thrown a

-way It
with some-
thing sil
-very

;bright,&mys(

a thrown a-
way
X
-mas)ter-

i

-ous wisp A of glo-
ry.pr
-ettily
cl(tr)in(ee)gi-
ng

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Okay, I love Cummings’ fun poems like yesterday’s and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” but when I see things like this I usually wonder what went wrong in the poet’s childhood. So I was very happy when earlier this year Ben posted a link to Remy’s explanation of this purely visual poem — and it’s very good. You should go read it. Unless, of course, you’re the sort of person who understands this kind of thing intuitively.
:-p

P.S.
I’ve only seen this online so I don’t know if it’s really supposed to be centered the way I have, but I think it looks better that way, and it is a chiasm, after all.