E. E. Cummings was known for his experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly distinctive means of poetic expression that was all his own. In the poem "Spring is like a perhaps hand", the use of irregular word patterns is flagrant and at first seems to present a serious obstacle to understanding the poem. Through the course of the poem, however, both Cummings' verbal devices and the meaning of the poem are revealed as the reader breaks down any hurdles that the style of poetry presents at first. The prejudices regarding language dissipate and give way to derivation of universal meaning and the underlying theme within the poem.
             The tongue practically trips over itself when reading the title aloud, abandoning the rules of grammar. The first stanza is hectic and cramped, with words literally running into each other. –Ing words are abundant, and the capitalization is inconsistent as well. Then, the bearing of the poem somehow transcends the chasm of its chaotic aspects. "Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging...and changing placing carefully". What is a perhaps hand? After reading the first line, it is unclear, but by the end of the stanza, the poem has created an image of this hand, frivolous, busy. It is almost like the hand of a housewife, spring cleaning the living room on a rainy day. Furiously, her hands move all around the room, picking up a vase here, setting it down over there, turning it, wiping the dust off, straightening the books in their shelves, flattening the carpet, stroking back the curtains.
             The second and fourth stanzas reaffirm the image of spring's perhaps hand as that of a mother. The second stanza, "changing everything carefully", and the fourth, "without breaking anything" perfectly describe the motions of a mother's han...