conventional indications of structure which make it easier for the reader to pay attention
to the meaning conveyed by the words themselves but as independent instruments of
expression susceptible of infinite variation. Thus he refuses to make use of capitals for
the purposes for which they were invented–to indicate the beginnings of sentences and the
occurrence of proper names–but insists upon pressing them into service for purposes of
emphasis; and he even demotes the first person singular of the pronoun by a small i, only
printing it as a capital when he desires to give it special salience–not, apparently,
realizing that for readers accustomed to seeing it the other way it calls ten times as
much attention to "I" to write it as a small letter than to print it in the
ordinary fashion. But the really serious case against Mr. Cummings’s punctuation is that
the results which it yields are ugly. His poems are hideous on the page. He insists upon
shattering even the most conventional and harmless of his productions, which if they had
their deserts would appear in neat little boxes like the innocuous correct prose poems of
Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith, into an explosive system of fragments which, so far from making
the cadences easier to follow only involves us in a jig-saw puzzle of putting them
together again. In the long run, I think it may be said that words have to carry their own
cadence and emphasis through the order in which they are written. The extent to which
punctuation and typography can help out is really very limited.
Behind this formidable barrier of punctuation for which Mr. Cummings
seems unfortunately to have achieved most celebrity, his emotions are conventional and
simple in the extreme. They even verge occasionally on the banal. You have the adoration
of young love and the delight in the coming of spring and you have the reflection that all
flesh must die and all "roses" turn to "ashes." But this is perhaps
precisely where Mr. Cummings has an advantage over Mr. Stevens. Whatever Cummings is he is
not chilled; he is not impervious to life. He responds eagerly and unconstrainedly to all
that the world has to offer. His poetry constitutes an expression–and for the most part a
charming expression–of a kind very rare in America–it is the record of a temperament
which loves and enjoys, which responds readily with mockery or tenderness, entirely
without the inhibitions from which so much of American writing is merely the anguish to
escape. He is one of the only American authors living who is not reacting against
something. And for this example of the good life–and for the fact that, after all, he is
a poet at a time when there is a great deal of writing of verse and very little real
poetic feeling–Mr. Cummings deserves well of the public.
from Edmund Wilson, "Wallace Stevens and E. E. Cummings." New
Republic 38 (1924): 102-03.
On is 5 Which Contains "Poem, or Beauty
Hurts Mr. Vinal," "‘next to of course god america i," and "my
sweet old etcetera"
Maurice Lesemann (1926)
There are a number of poems in is 5 which are delightful for sheer appalling
cleverness…. It is notable that in all this group…there are scarcely a dozen poems
which imply any emotion other than laughter. They are full of boisterous energy, and seem
to have been written with great gusto, but they are external, clear of all comment, all
overtones, save laughter, the most external of the emotions. Often they communicate no
intensity but that of the writer working excitedly with his words. This poet never reveals
his inward emotional self while he is aware of the present century. The picture he gives
of his own time is invariably vivid, and almost invariably unpleasant. He goes out to it
with all the energy of his mind, but his inner self withdraws and preserves itself remote
and immune. As in the later work of Joyce, there is a strenuous effort to meet all
manifestations of externality without flinching; an effort to say yes to the world without
establishing a profound inner connection. The resultant world-of-the-poems is a lurid
place inhabited by thugs, policemen, Greek restauranteurs, pimps and prostitutes, drug
addicts, crooked politicians, and an occasional stupid business man. This cast of
characters has certainly not been chosen for its startling effect. The most startling
character Mr. Cummings could offer at the present moment of American literature would be
an intelligent and likable business man, who has no urge to be an artist. Perhaps the
building of a peculiarly selected poem-world is necessary to poets nowadays, to form a
callus upon their spirits and protect them from empirical harshness.
from Maurice Lesemann, "The Poetry of E. E. Cummings." Poetry
29 (1926): 164-69.
On ViVa, which contains "i sing of Olaf glad
and big" and
"Space being (don’t forget to remember) Curved"
Allen Tate (1932)
His uniformity is not uniformity of style. The point could be labored, but I
think it is sufficient to refer the reader of Cummings to the three distinct styles of
poems XVIII, LI, and LVII in Viva. He has a great many styles, and
having these he has none at all–a defect concealed by his famous mechanism of distorted
word and line. For a style is that indestructible quality of a piece of writing which may
be distinguished from its communicable content but which in no sense can be subtracted
from it: the typographical device can be seen so subtracted by simple alteration either in
the direction of conventional pattern or in the direction of greater distortion. The
typography is distinct from style, something superimposed and external to the poem, a
mechanical system of variety and a formula of surprise; it is–and this is its function–a
pseudodynamic feature that galvanizes the imagery with the look of movement, of freedom,
of fresh perception, a kind of stylization which is a substitute for a living relation
among the images themselves, in the lack of a living relation between the images and the
sensibility of the poet. Mr. Cummings’ imagery reaches the page still-born.
************************
…from the aggregate of Mr. Cummings’ poems we return to the image of
his personality: like all poets he seems to say "more" than the explicit terms
convey, but this "more" lies in the origin of the poem, not in the interplay of
its own terms. From To His Coy Mistress we derive no clue to the existence of such
a person as "Andrew Marvell"; from Viva we get only the evidence of personality.
And this is what Cummings’ poetry "means." It is a kind of meaning very common
at present; Mr. Cummings is the original head of an easily imitable school. This does not
mean that he has ever been successfully imitated; no one else has written
"personal" poetry as well as Mr. Cummings writes it. It is rather that he has
shown the possibility of making personal conventions whose origin and limit are
personality.
from Allen Tate, "Personal Convention." Poetry 39 (1932): 332-37.
On No Thanks, which contains
"r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r"
Kenneth Burke (1935)
Despite superficial differences, E. E. Cummings’ "No thanks"
and Kenneth Fearing’s "Poems" have important ingredients in common. Both poets
have an exceptional gift for the satirically picturesque. Both specialize in rhetorical
devices that keep their pages vivacious almost to the extent of the feverish. Both are
practised at suggesting the subjective through the objective. And both seem driven by
attitudes for which there is no completely adequate remedy in the realm of the practical
(with Cummings, a sense of isolation–with Fearing, an obsession with death).
Cummings has more range, which is not always a virtue in his case, as
much of his wider scope is devoted to cryptic naughtiness of an immature sort, a somewhat
infantile delight in the sexual parts, alembicated confessions that seem unnecessarily shy
and coy (material which, I suspect, Cummings would have abandoned long before now, had he
not discovered a few processes of stylistic chemistry for extracting the last bit of ore).
And like the chronic invalid who comes to identify his doctor with his disease, hating
them interchangeably, he is dissatisfied not only with the current political and economic
texture, but also with the "famous fatheads" and "folks with missians"
(vindictively mis-spelled) who would attempt its radical cure. Fearing can be buoyed up
with the thought of a situation wherein "millions of voices become one voice"
and "millions of hands . . . move as one." But Cummings sees the process from
the other side, as he strikes at those "worshipping Same," says they "got
athlete’s mouth jumping on & off bandwaggons," and in not very loving verse
lambastes the "kumrads" for being deficient in love.
But even a lone wolf cannot feel wholly content without allies. Hence,
as with belligerent capitalist states, his occasional nondescript alliance with anyone who
will serve (witness his scattering of somewhat shamefacedly anti-Semitic aphorisms,
usually consigned to cryptogram, but still "nonsufficiently in understood"). As
we read "No thanks" carefully, the following picture emerges: For delights,
there is sexual dalliance, into which the poet sometimes reads cosmic implications (though
a communicative emphasis is lacking). For politics, an abrupt willingness to let the whole
thing go smash. For character building, the rigors of the proud and lonely, eventually
crystallizing in rapt adulation of the single star, which is big, bright, deep, near,
soft, calm, alone and holy–"Who (holy alone) holy (alone holy) alone."
from Kenneth Burke, "Two Kinds of Against." New Republic 83 (1935):
198-99.
On 50 Poems, which contains "anyone lived
in a pretty how town"
R. P. Blackmur (1941)
Mr. Cummings’ poems depend entirely upon what they create in process,
only incidentally upon what their preliminary materials or intentions may have been. Thus,
above all, there is a prevalent quality of uncertainty, of uncompleted possibility, both
in the items and in the fusion of the items which make up the poems; but there is also the
persistent elementary eloquence of intension–of things struggling, as one says crying, to
be together, and to make something of their togetherness which they could never exhibit
separately or in mere series. The words, the meanings in the words, and also the nebula of
meaning and sound and pun around the words, are all put into an enlivening relation to
each other. There is, to employ a word which appealed to Hart Crane in similar contexts, a
sense of synergy in all the successful poems of Mr. Cummings: synergy is the condition of
working together with an emphasis on the notion of energy in the working, and energy in
the positive sense, so that one might say here that Mr. Cummings’ words were energetic.
The poems are, therefore, eminently beyond paraphrase, not because they have no logical
content–for they do, usually very simple–but because so much of the activity is apart
from that of logical relationships, is indeed in associations free of, though not alien
to, logical associations. In short, they create their objects.
…I have been one of his admirers for twenty-one years since I first
saw his poetry in the Dial; and it may be that my admiration has gone up and down
so many hills that it is a little fagged and comes up to judgment with entirely too many
reservations. Yet I must make them, and hope only that the admiration comes through.
First, there is the big reservation that, contrary to the general
belief and contrary to what apparently he thinks himself, Mr. Cummings is not…an
experimental poet at all….
My second reservation…has to do with his vocabulary, which seems to
me at many crucial points so vastly over-generalized as to prevent any effective mastery
over the connotations they are meant to set up as the substance of his poems….
My third reservation is minor, and has to do with the small boy writing
privy inscriptions on the wall; a reservation which merely to state is sufficiently to
expound. Some of the dirt perhaps comes under the head of the poetry of gesture, and some
perhaps is only the brutality of disgust. My complaint is meant to be technical; most of
the dirt is not well enough managed to reach the level of either gesture or disgust, but
remains, let us say, coprophiliac which is not a technical quality.
from R. P. Blackmur, "[Review of 50 poems]." Southern Review 7
(1941): 201-05.
Babette Deutsch
e e cummingsesq: A review of his 50 Poems
:dearmrcummings it is
late
r than you th
ink ;printersink s
ingdownand sp (o)
ill
ing(
ver)
the
page
doesnt
excite or delight us
the same way anymore ;not
that we ask you to stop (look Listen)
drinking
at the pierian sp
ring
(aroundarosie)
;but you must be
careful or you will get
all
!wet
we also admire
win-
tree trunk leaf sky & sn
o wfl
akes ;prettygirls littlechildr
en-
during moons sl
0 wtwi
lights flowers & loves brief
mercies
;and we like your
impudent balla
dry
;but
it is
nineteenfortyone mrcummings
,and you must forgive us
if we sometimes
y
aaaw
n
;because it is
appallingly
late.
hell is a thirsty place
and only
a draught from the top of
helicon will do ;we are not asking you for
something new ,simply
few
and (er
)or better
?poems
from Babette Deutsch, "e e cummingsesq: A review of his 50 Poems
." The Nation 17 May 1941, 591.
Commentary on Cummings’ Art and Poetry
Charles Norman (1958)
[Norman relates Cummings’ "individuality of style" in his line drawings,
watercolors, and oil paintings.]
…His line drawings are different from Picasso’s or Cocteau’s…in that they
stop abruptly at the point where movement has been caught….
…In watercolor…he achieves–again with a minimum of strokes–an Oriental
simplicity. His watercolors are deceptive, because Cummings is after an impression,
sometimes so fleeting as to be gone with a change of light; but having caught what he
wished, the picture remains without embellishment….
In his watercolors Cummings is not so much painting a picture as capturing a poetic
metaphor in paint; that is to say, he is celebrating Nature, as he does so often in his
poetry….[His] watercolors…fail to satisfy Western eyes used to projections of mass
instead of space. In this…he is more Oriental than occidental, as though he really were
an inhabitant of China "where a painter is a poet."
It is with his oils that Cummings calls for consideration as a painter wholly apart
from his other, writing self. His oils reveal a mastery of his medium in which the tactile
and the sensory combine, and in this combination faces, landscapes and flowers no longer
celebrate life, but are a part of it….
from Charles Norman, The Magic-Maker: E. E. Cummings. New York: Macmillan, 1958.
Rushworth M. Kidder (1976)
…Cummings’ early poetry and art did bear affinities with that of the Decadents:
sensuality abounded, often gratuitously, and the will to shock the complacency of
bourgeois arts and letters went hand in hand with an art-for-art’s-sake undercurrent.
But as the self-conscious lushness of his early poems dropped away, a new firmness took
its place: the impulse towards economy replaced the temptation towards prolixity. It is no
accident that long poems disappeared from his later volumes. Neither is it an accident
that as Cummings progressed he became more representational in his painting and drawing.
The immediacy of the outer world impinged more and more upon the inner fantasies; satire
replace luxurious sensuality, and the artist who began with the interests of a Beardsley
drew closer to the viewpoints of a Daumier.
Yet throughout this period of growth and development [roughly between 1920 and 1925]
there remain constant similarities between poems and drawings. In each, he is seeking to
convey the delight and humor which his own quick wit found in the world around him. And in