EE ​​Cummings' poem, “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May,” tells the story of four girls who each learn a lesson from their own experiences. To explain these lessons, Cummings uses poetic devices such as alliteration, simile, and symbolism to clarify messages in an engaging way. In "Maggie and Milly and Molly and May", Maggie, Milly, Molly and May find a seashell, a starfish, a crab and a stone, where each object sends a message. At the beginning of the poem, Cummings quickly describes the initial meeting on the beach: “and Maggie discovered a shell that sang / so sweetly that she couldn't remember her troubles, and” (3-4). When referring to the singing of a conch shell, the sound of the ocean is heard from the conch shell after holding it close to the ear. Maggie is so fascinated by that particular sound that her tribulations escape her mind. To express this thought, Cummings uses oblique rhyme to exquisitely clarify the meaning of the two lines without overtly inferring it. Just as Cummings gets to the point in lines three and four, the same thing happens in lines five and six in Mil...