v———w+ _’

 

 

 

MEANING AND TECHNIQUE:
_UNlTY IN THE LATER POETRY~ ;
' 0F e.e.cumm"ing‘s '

Dissertation forthé Degree of Ph. 'D. v

" mum STATE UNIVERSITY * f
WlLLIAM ELUOT THOMPSON
1.976 . -

u

f

    
     

   

llllllllllllllllll
Michigan 59!!

University

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

MEANING AND TECHNIQUE:
UNITY IN THE LATER POETRY
OF e. e. cummings

presented by

WILLIAM ELLIOT THOMPSON

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in EngliSh

if” C kwfi

Major professor

OJ, /
Date/ / 28, 7740

0-7639

 
      

’ Eflfifnl’ll'u'i‘“
tummy. «£23

LTVAm’

 

ABSTRACT

MEANING AND TECHNIQUE: UNITY IN THE
LATER POETRY OF e. e. cummings

BY

William Elliot Thompson

The criticism most persistently made during the
half-century of e. e. cummings' writing career was that
he was limited by "permanent adolescence." Every admirer
of cummings' unique style has had to counter this charge;
accordingly, cummings' life-view has been compared to the
philosophies of the Romantic poets, to Martin Buber‘s
"I-thou" concept and to the christian (with a lower case
"0") love ethic. This dissertation employs a humanistic
psychological analysis of cummings' life-view to affirm
the positive value of his vision.

In the first four chapters I inductively derive
the major elements of his life-view from his poems,
fiction and prose, demonstrating a reading process which
any careful reader can replicate, showing by example the
processes a reader might use to discover the ethical
system expressed in the poems. Comparison of the major

elements of cummings' life-view with the principles of

William Elliot Thompson

Abraham Maslow's "Psychology of Being" shows that, accord-
ing to Maslovian standards of health, cummings' persona
presents attitudes which are mature, humanistic and psy-
chologically healthy.

The second charge lodged against cummings is that
he violated poetic conventions irrationally, that his
technical innovations are idiosyncratic and usually
unsuccessful. An argument central to this dissertation
is that the §g£m_of each cummings poem is derived from
the content value-system he wished to express. His tech-
niques were develOped in an attempt to express his poetic
vision properly.

Far from being irrational violations of conven-
tions, his techniques may be seen as growing logically
out of a conviction that techniques should express indi-
vidual experience. If a convention seemed useful and
appropriate to the subject-matter of the poem, then cum-
mings used that convention. But if a convention impeded
or obscured the precise presentation of a poem's sub-
stance, that convention was either modified or discarded.
In 1913 Ezra Pound announced a similar position as part
of the Imagist movement, and there are strong reasons to
believe that much of cummings' aesthetic theory stemmed
from his admiration for the theory and practice of poets

connected with Ezra Pound and the Imagiste movement.

William Elliot Thompson

In the last four chapters I derive the elements
of cummings' aesthetic theory from his poetic practice
and his prose. ‘In Chapters VI and VII I demonstrate that
cummings' technical innovations were probably developed
as brilliant responses to the aesthetic challenges of
(l) adhering to a personal set of vigorous aesthetic
demands similar to those set by the Imagist poets between
1908 and 1917, and (2) creating a form in each poem organ-
ically derived from the poem's content. Thus cummings
is placed in the mainstream of an experimental literary
tradition, incorporating elements of Imagist aesthetic
theory and the principles of Organic Form. In the con-
cluding chapter cummings' influence on contemporary poets
is explored. Several contemporary poets have acknowledged
their indebtedness to cummings' experiments, and many of
his techniques have been incorporated into the styles of
poets writing today.

Z}_pggmg, cummings' final book, yields rich
rewards from careful reading and comparison with the
books of poems which preceded it. It is a masterpiece
of poetic technique, expressing mature attitudes toward
self, others, America, the world and life's mysteries.
Many of his values remained unchanged throughout his
life, but his expression of them grew more complex,

integrated and effective over the years. This study

William Elliot Thompson

focuses on cummings' last and finest book of poems,
ranging back through his earlier work to show the growth

and development of his vision and poetic techniques.

MEANING AND TECHNIQUE: UNITY IN THE

LATER POETRY OF e. e. cummings

BY

William Elliot Thompson

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1976

6:) Copyright by
WILLIAM ELLIOT THOMPSON

1976

For Carol and Linda

"Ideals are like the stars:
we cannot reach them
but we set our course by them."

and in memory of my parents

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A community of teacher-scholars and family sup-
porters has made this dissertation possible. I am
especially indebted to Linda W. Wagner, who read and
corrected the manuscript several times and discussed it
with me in all its phases. She shared her knowledge of
Imagism and Organic Form, her appreciation for cummings'
poetry and her enthusiastic concern for how a poem is
made. Her fine teaching and scholarly excellence make
her a model of the humanistic teacher-scholar.

Herbert Greenberg communicated his appreciation
of Abraham Maslow's psychological principles and
encouraged the work at every stage. William H. Johnsen
lent dialectical assistance, causing me to reconsider
my position on several key points.

Bert G. Hornback read, criticized and encouraged
the work; he is also the person whose excellent teaching
inspired my undergraduate interest in pursuing a doctoral
program in literature.

Cummings' appreciative critics, particularly

Norman Friedman, Charles Norman and Barry Marks, prepared

iii

the way in their books for the roads I have taken; all
of the books of cummings criticism demonstrate sensi—
tivity to and intelligent affirmation of the poet's work.

The English Department gave financial assistance
in the form of a Dissertation Grant. Thanks are also
due Marty North for editorial assistance and typing.

Yet with all of that assistance the writing
would still not have been possible without the encourage-
ment of friends and adopted families. Finally, the
emotional support and technical assistance of my wife,
Carol, herself a dedicated scholar-teacher, was essential

to the successful conclusion of this endeavor.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .

II. INNOCENCE, MYSTERY, ALIVENESS, AND FEELING:
ELEMENTS OF CUMMINGS' "YES" VISION . .

III. CUMMINGS' ETHICAL SYSTEM: TRANSCENDENCE
TH R0 U GH LOVE 0 O O O O O O O C

IV. CUMMINGS' ETHICAL SYSTEM: INDIVIDUALITY.

V. CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE:
INTENSITY O O O O O O O O O 0

VI. CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE:
ELEMENTS GROWING OUT OF THE IMAGIST
TRADITION O C C O C O O C O O

VII. CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE:
ELEMENTS GROWING OUT OF THE ORGANIC
FORM TRADITION. . . . . . . . .
VIII 0 CONCLUSION O O O C O O I O O 0
APPENDIX

B-VALUES AS DESCRIPTIONS OF PERCEPTION IN
PEAK EXPERIENCES . . . . . . . .

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . .

Page

18

48

61

83

110

141

175

196

200

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Critical opinion regarding cummings' poetry was
sharply divided during the forty years between the
appearance of Tulips §_Chimneys (1923) and 13 poems
(1963). Fellow poets such as Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore,
John Dos Passos and William Carlos Williams recognized
his achievements from his Harvard days until his death.
These were the Imagist poets, the experimenters, the
modernists of the 19203. However, more formally con-
servative poets like John Crowe Ransom, Randall Jarrell,
Yvor Winters and R. P. Blackmur disliked his experiments
with language and tended to judge his poetry from
standards they took to be sacrosanct. They confessed
to finding cummings enjoyable but somehow threatening in
his apparent disregard for the conventions of poetic
craft.

With a few exceptions, the criticism before 1954
coming out of the academic community is almost uniformly
hostile. The first book of criticism of cummings' work

was S. V. Baum's collection of thirty-two articles, all

written prior to the publication of Poems 1923-1954.

 

The main lines of attack evident in that book (and rep-
resentative of the body of criticism written up to 1954)
are three: first, critics like Ludwig Lewisohn asserted
that "I think it is absurd to take him so seriously. He
who is indiscriminatingly bitter about everything has
evidently no balanced judgment or assured sense of values"
(Baum, 177).1 Second, in his 1931 "Notes on E. E.
Cummings' Language" R. P. Blackmur argued that "so far
as meaning goes, in the poetry into which he translated
it, sentimentality, empty convention and commonplace
rule." Third, Harriet Monroe attacked his "eccentric
system of typography which, in our opinion, has nothing
to do with the poem, but intrudes itself irritatingly,
like scratched or blurred spectacles, between it and the
reader's mind" (Baum, 21).

In his "Polemical Introduction" to The Anatomy

 

of Criticism Northrop Frye argues that all value judgments

 

generate from some implied ethical system:
Every deliberately constructed hierarchy of values
in literature known to me is based on a concealed
social, moral, or intellectual analogy.
The negative criticisms cited above probably stem from
value systems different from cummings' or from views of
aesthetic decorum more conservative than cummings' views,

since they contain words laden with emotional negation

such as "absurd," "sentimentality," "empty convention,"

"commonplace," "eccentric" and "irritatingly." Frye con-
tinues with the observation that "the various pretexts
for minimizing the communicative power of certain
writers, that they are obscure or obscene or nihilistic
or reactionary or what not, generally turn out to be
disguises for a feeling that the views of decorum held

by the ascendant social or intellectual class ought to

be either maintained or challenged" (Frye, 23). Such
"social fixations" are seen by Frye as "prejudices
derived from" the critic's "existence as a social being"
in most cases. Frye also asserts that “prejudice is
simply inadequate deduction, as a prejudice in the mind
can never be anything but a major premise which is mostly
submerged, like an iceberg" (Frye, 22).

I will counter such negative criticisms in this
dissertation by surveying in this chapter the work of the
major positive critics of cummings' work, summarizing
their defenses of cummings' value-system. Another chapter
will attempt to derive inductively his ethical system
from his poetry, fiction and prose. As this process
proceeds I will compare each element of the ethical
system with Abraham Maslow's psychological theories in
order to show that cummings' approach to life is mature,
humanistic and psychologically healthy by Maslovian
standards. The inductive method insures that I am

describing cummings' values and not superimposing my

own (positive) prejudices on his work. The inductive
method may also be replicated by any reader, and so
demonstrates ways a reader can discover cummings' values
for her/himself.

Next I will show that many of cummings' tech-
niques grew out of the aesthetic theory and practice of
the Imagist poets; therefore his techniques are not as
"idiosyncratic" as they at first appear to be, but instead
his technical methods are part of a modern tradition (in
which his hostile critics are not participants) which
extends into contemporary poetic practice.

In Chapter VIII I will prove that cummings is
one of the practitioners of Organic Form, and that his
typography is not merely "eccentric" but was crafted to
perfectly express the ethical content of his poems. The
theory and practice of Organic Form may be traced to the
writings of Aristotle and Plato, again proving that cum-
mings was not "eccentric,” but was a participant in a
poetic tradition which is within the mainstream of
western aesthetic theory and practice. A final proof
that cummings is not so idiosyncratic as his antagonistic
critics have maintained is the fact that many contemporary
poets have specifically credited cummings with pioneering
techniques which they have incorporated into their own

writing methods.

My critical goals are those of Walter Pater,
Norman Friedman and Northrop Frye in their emphasis on
positive criticism. As Frye says, "every new criti-
cal fashion has increased the appreciation of some poets
and depreciated others, as the increase of interest in
the metaphysical poets tended to depreciate the Romantics
[in the 19303]. On the ethical level we can see that
every increase of appreciation has been right, and every
decrease wrong: that criticism has no business to react
against things, but should show a steady advance toward
. . . catholicity" (Frye, 25). The object of this disser-
tation is simply to increase the appreciation of cummings'
work, especially his final book, lg’pggm_. As Frye's
essay argues, cummings deserves to be read through an
ethical system sympathetic to his own.

Each of the full-length critical studies of
cummings' work is a positive assessment. Each of these
positive critics has described cummings' values and has
compared his ethical system to another philosophical
system in an attempt to establish the value of cummings'
life-view. In 1960 Norman Friedman echoed Northrop
Frye's objection to "prejudiced" negative criticism in

E. E. Cummings: The Art g£_His Poetry:

 

. . . Some of our reigning critics are bound by
certain limiting conceptions as to what poetry
should be and . . . these conceptions do not
happen to apply very comfortably to Cummings.
To look in his work for the signs of a tragic

vision, for an ambivalence of structure, for a
studied use of verbal ambiguity, for the display

of a metaphysical wit, for the employment of mythic
fragments, for the climax of a spiritual conver-
sion--this is to look for things which are simply
not there. And to complain, accordingly, that he
lacks maturity of vision, variety of forms, intel-
ligibility of diction, true seriousness, a sense of
artistic purpose, and development is to misconstrue
the nature both of critical principles and of Cum-
mings' poetry.3

Friedman's far~ranging study effectively counters most of
the negative criticism published before 1960 in article
and review form. He points out the ironic fact that
critics like Blackmur and Monroe attack cummings' poetry
on the basis of preconceived standards, yet confess that
they are often delighted by the poems:
To feel delight and yet to be persuaded of the
insignificance of its causes is not the proper
state of mind in which to approach the poetry of
Cummings--or of any other poet. Indeed, it is the
right of any poet to be evaluated in terms of what
he does rather than in terms of what he should do,
and it is the duty of his critic to allow the work
to flower before him in terms of its own inner
necessities rather than merely what a given fashion
has taught us to care for. (p. 4)

Friedman describes the content of cummings' poems
in terms of the value-system of a poet and artist: "The
poet, for cummings, is merely the type of the true man,
and all true men are poets: men who can see with clear

eyes, feel with unconditioned emotions, and love without

fear; men who are whole, entire, and alive" (p. 10).

Barry Marks points out in the Twayne series
E, E, Cummings (1964) the similarities between the methods
of cummings, Melville and Thoreau. All three writers
wanted the reader to "share the experience" being expressed
in the writing. Henry James pursued a goal similar to
cummings‘ attempt to shake readers from "their expec-
tation of being merely entertained, of merely reading
a book, into a readiness to participate with their
whole beings in a deep encounter with life itself"
(p. 134). Marks particularly points to cummings' typo-
graphical "distortions" as accomplishing what Henry James
describes as placing "readers in a position where they
would genuinely participate in the hero's progress from
confusion to knowledge" (135).

Friedman's earlier book focused on cummings'

poetry; in his 1964 E. E, Cummings: The Growth 2£.E

 

Writer, he emphasizes on the "vision and development"
and covers cummings' fiction, drama and prose as well
as the poetry. In the latter book Friedman describes

cummings' vision as "Romantic":

Cummings belongs with Coleridge and the Romantic
tradition in seeing the natural order as superior
to man-made orders. He, like Coleridge, views
nature as process rather than product, as dynamic
rather than static, as organic rather than product,
and as becoming rather than being. And he, like
Coleridge, believes that the intuitive or imagi-
native faculty in man can perceive this natura
naturans directly, and so he is a transcenden-
talist. (p. 5)5

Friedman's placing of cummings in the English Romantic
and transcendental tradition is helpful in refuting the
charge that his vision is "immature" and "eccentric."
Friedman describes cummings' Romanticism as a "transcen-
dental" world in which objects are infused with values,
things become verbs and life is vitalized by "magic,
miracle, and mystery" which is perceivable if we open
ourselves to its presence all around us:
The ordinary world is a world of habit, routine,
and abstract categories, and hence lies like a
distorting film over the true world of sponteneity,
surprise, and concrete life. . . . The true world
is a world of three-dimensional depths, truths,
and verbs. . . . For cummings, it is the poet's
function to decry the ordinary world and exalt the
true, to represent not what any camera can see but
to imitate the "actual crisp organic squirm" itself.
Cummings' transcendental vision, then, is of a
spiritual world, a world where facts are saturated
in values, a world of magic, miracle, and mystery.
(PP- 5-6)
Friedman continues from this description to state that
the intuitively perceived Romantic world has a "natural
order of its own": thus "an attempt to grasp it repre-
sents not an abandonment to disorder but rather a
struggle to realize a higher order" (p. 6). He shows
us that cummings' poetry, like much of modern literature,
embodies the insight that "reality exceeds the forms
which man has devised for dealing with it" (p. 4).

Eve Triem has added a footnote to Friedman's

explanation of cummings' brand of "transcendence" in

her University of Minnesota Pamphlet E. E. Cummings
(1969): "Growing from poem to poem--shedding skin after
skin--Cummings emerges as really himself, and therefore
as everyone: that is the true definition of transcen-
dence" (44).6
The 1972 Twentieth Century Views collection of

critical essays organizes fourteen articles into three
groups: cummings' view of life; his language, style and
techniques; his longer prose works. Friedman has edited
this collection, and it differs from his two critical
books on cummings in moving away from defensiveness by
choosing essays "primarily for the information they give
about and the insight they offer into the actual nature
of cummings' accomplishment," preferring "depth and
breadth of analytical penetration to cleverness, appre-
ciation, tribute, testimonial, or memoir."7 Friedman
summarizes the present state of critical opinion regard-
ing cummings' work in these words:

The fact is that Cummings changed quite markedly

all through his life. His love poetry, for example,

became less erotic and more transcendental. His

typography exploded--and then imploded. His lin-

guistic distortions became more meaningful and

luminous. Most important of all, his vision of

life deepened and crystallized to a degree not yet

sufficiently appreciated by the critics, for the

current expectations about vision are the most
excluding of all. (p. 5)

10

The critical community is moving toward appreciation of
cummings' technical innovation and craftsmanship, but is
not yet ready to appreciate the positive attributes of
his vision. The first half of this dissertation explores
cummings' vision in the light of Abraham Maslow's theory
of psychological health, supporting Friedman's appreci-
ations from a psychological viewPoint. Once we under-
stand cummings' values we can better recognize the tech-
nical excellence of the poems he wrote to express that
vision.

Humanistic psychology, pioneered by Abraham
Maslow, Carl Rogers and a group of about seventy psycho-
logists and psychiatrists, has supplied us with termi-
nology and conceptual apparatus with which we may more
fully describe cummings' life-view and value system as
it is expressed in his poems.

Three books by Maslow are especially useful in
setting out his psychological theories: Toward 3 Egyf

chology g£_Being (1962), Religions, Values, and Peak

 

 

Experiences (1964) and The Farther Reaches g£_Human

 

 

Nature (1971). One article by Maslow is also useful as

a summary, "A Theory of Human Motivation," Psychological

 

Review, vol. 50, pp. 370-396 (1943). The best discussion
of the ways Maslow's theories may be applied to literature

is Bernard J. Paris's §_Psychologica1 Approach £9 Fiction,

 

Indiana University Press, 1974. Paris applies Third

ll

Force psychological theories to the fiction of Thackaray,
Stendhal, George Eliot, Dostoevsky and Conrad. He is
concerned primarily with patterns of neurosis in the
fictional works he discusses, whereas this dissertation
is concerned with patterns of psychological health.

Maslow's psychological theory is inclusive rather
than exclusive. His aim has been to consider all other
psychological theories as parts of a larger picture; thus
he has hypothesized a hierarchy of needs. Maslow asserts
that "the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy
of prepotency" and that "the organism is dominated and
its behavior organized only by unsatisfied needs" (EEE,
87).8 Maslow divides the human needs into five cate-
gories. Hunger is the most basic human need. When the
hunger need is gratified, the person moves on toward
satisfying "higher needs."

The second need is “safety." The "healthy, normal,
fortunate adults in our society" are "largely satisfied"
in their safety needs. Third comes the need both to give
love successfully and to receive love from others.

The fourth category of needs is the need for
esteem. This involves self-esteem "which is soundly
based upon real capacity, achievement, and respect from
others." These in turn are subdivided into "two sub-
sidiary sets." The first subset includes the "desire

for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for

12

confidence in the face of the world, and for independence
and freedom" (92). The second subset includes "the desire
for reputation or prestige, recognition, attention,
importance or appreciation. These are the needs stressed
by Alfred Adler and his associates" (p. 92).

Finally we come to Maslow's fifth category, the
need for "self-actualization, the need for self-fulfill-
ment." According to Maslow, this need includes the "ten-
dency . . . to become actualized in what [one] is poten-
tially," or the desire "to become everything that one
is capable of becoming" (92). Maslow reports that it is
his "impression (as yet unconfirmed) that it is possible
to distinguish the artistic and intellectual products of
basically satisfied people from those of basically unsat-
isfied people by inspection alone" (93).

The poetic experience we share with cummings as
we read his poetry, especially his final book of poems,
is similar to the kind of experience attributed to the
"self-actualizing" personality in Maslow's books Toward

3 Psychology 9: Being and Religions, Values, and Peak

 

 

 

Experiences. Through clinical studies of "fully

 

functioning and healthy human beings," Abraham Maslow
has compiled a "composite photograph" of the "highest
reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities

and aspirations" (TPB, 72).9 In Toward §_P§ychology g£

 

Being Maslow defines self-actualization as:

13

An episode, . . . in which the powers of the person
come together in a particularly efficient and
intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more
integrated and less split, more open for experience,
more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or
spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative,
more humorous, more ego-transcending, more indepen-
dent of his lower needs, etc. He becomes in these
episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actual-
izing his potentialities, closer to the core of his
Being, more fully human.

(TPB, 97)

In the 1970 Religions, Values, and Peak Exper-
iences, Maslow describes qualities which are part of the
"Peak Experience," offering a descriptive definition of
these highest of human insights. He notes that tradi-
tionally such experiences have been considered to be
"Religious happenings"--mystical experiences or revel-
ations; but Maslow claims that such experiences are
naturalistic and may happen to anyone:

Such states or episodes can, in theory, come at
any time in life to any person. What seems to
distinguish those individuals I have called self-
actualizing people, is that in them these episodes
seem to come far more frequently, and intensely
and perfectly than in average people.1
The most creative and self—actualizing individuals achieve
the intensest Peak Experiences, attain them more often
than most of us and are often able to describe them or
create works of art while in the midst of them. Then

such artists are able to go back to these creations after

the "Peak Experiences" (moments of creation) have passed

l4

and apply logic, their critical skills, and their artistic
sensibilities to the work of art to make the rough drafts
into masterpieces.

I will try to show the ways in which the speaker
of cummings' lyric poems fits Maslow's definition of the
"self-actualizing" individual and that the poems tend to
demonstrate and dramatize peak experiences so that by
participating in cummings' poetic process and by follow—
ing the stage directions of his poems, we can participate
with him in some of his peak experiences. To accomplish
this I will compare some of the perceptions and feelings
a person is likely to feel when in the midst of a Peak
Experience with sections of cummings' poems in which the
same feelings or the same type of perceptions are being
expressed by the speaker of the poem. A list of Peak
Experience perceptions is reproduced in Appendix A.
Further reference to this list and comparative analysis
of cummings' poems will be found in later chapters.

This dissertation does not insist that the author
of cummings' poems is a healthy person. Instead it offers
the comparison of attitudes exhibited by the persona of
the poems with attributes considered to be "healthy" in
the light of Maslow's psychological hypotheses. The
reader of the poems will draw his own conclusions in
any case; I merely add this approach to the assertions

of Friedman, Marks, Wegner, Triem, the Lindroths and

15

others that the philOSOphy of life presented in cummings'
poems is one which should be given serious consideration
as an attitude which may be helpful in responding to the

challenge of living in the twentieth century.

CHAPTER I --NOTES

 

1S. V. Baum, ed., E. E. Cummings and the Critics
(East Lansing: Michigan State UfiIversity, 1962T.

2NorthrOp Frye, The Anatomy 9: Criticism (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, I957), paperback
ed., 1971, pp. 3-29.

 

3Norman Friedman, g. g. cummin s: The Art 9; His
Poetgy (Baltimore: The Johns HopEins Press, I965), p. 4.

4Barry Marks, E. E. Cummings, Twayne's United
States Authors Series TNew YorE: Twayne Publishers,
1964), p. 134.

5Norman Friedman, E. E. Cummings: The Growth gE
a Writer (Carbondale: Southern IIIinois University Press,

I964).

 

6Eve Triem, E. E. Cummings (University of Minne-
sota Pamphlet Series, 1969).

7Twentieth Century Views Series, E. E. Cummings,
ed. and with an introduction by Norman FrIedfian (EngIewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972). Hereafter
referred to in the text as " C " in parentheses, followed
by page numbers.

8Abraham Maslow, "A Theory of Human Motivation,"
Psychological Review," Psychological Review, 50 (1943),
370-96.

 

9Abraham Maslow, Toward E Psycholo g£_Being,
2nd ed. (New York: Van Nostrand ReinhoId, I968). Here-

after referenced in parentheses in the text as "TEE,"
followed by the page number.

16

17

10Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak
Experiences (New York: Viking Press, 1970). Referred to
hereafter in parentheses within the text as "_y2§,"
followed by the page number.

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

INNOCENCE, MYSTERY, ALIVENESS, AND FEELING:

ELEMENTS OF CUMMINGS' "YES" VISION

yes is a world

& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully coiled)
all worlds

(#58' NO Efléflig'
secofid’stanza)

The speaker in a typical cummings poem is cele-
brating what Maslow would call a "peak experience," one
in which the person is "more truly himself, more perfectly
actualizing his potentialities, closer to the core of his
Being," and "more fully human" (SEE. 97). In many cum-
mings poems we find that the speaker is "more integrated
and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyn-
cratic, more perfectly expressive . . . or fully func-
tioning, . . . more humorous, more ego-transcending,
more independent of his lower needs" (23E, 97). The
speaker is often reporting or demonstrating what it is

like to engage in a "peak experience." This section of

18

19

the dissertation explores the similarities between
Maslow's theory of psychological health and the exper-
iences presented in cummings' poems.

Life to e. e. cummings is positive, mysterious,
growing, feeling and beautiful: "Everywhere tints
childrening, innocent, spontaneous, true. . . . Nothing
believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface; nowhere
hating or to fear; shadow, mind without soul" ($22! 80).
Each individual is responsible for making his or her life
beautiful. The secret to a rich, positive life-view for
cummings is the attitude with which we approach life's
mysteries. If we are afraid of pain or sorrow or if we
insist on feeling threatened by phenomena we do not under-
stand, we will be emphasizing the negative elements in
life and will reap only sorrow, pain, bitterness. We
must approach life's adventures with an open heart, a
willingness to love and to be amazed:

who were so dark of heart they might not speak,
a little innocence will make them sing;

teach them to see who could not learn to look
--from the reality of all nothing

will actually lift a luminous whole;

turn sheer despairing to most perfect gay,

nowhere to here, never to beautiful:
a little innocence creates a day.

(XAIPE, #51)

According to the poem, "a little innocence" can work

wonders in any human being.

20

By "innocence" cummings means a childlike per-
ception of an object or person which is a totally absorbed,
completely attentive attitude in which he refrains from
"only abstracting, naming, placing, and comparing" (23E,
91). Such an attitude, according to Maslow, allows him to
keep the experience free of all of the rigid linguistic
categories and allows him to perceive "more aspects of the
many-sidedness of the person" or object (EEE, 91). Maslow
insists, with cummings, that the "ineffable" (cummings'
term "spirit") can be perceived only through a unification
of emotional and rational processes.

"Innocence," an attitude of openness, "creates a
day" where before there was only dark despair, frustration
or self-doubt. Those people "who were so dark of heart"
that they were unable even to "speak" (a form of communi-
cation inferior to singing, by cummings' standards) are
transformed into singers of life's beauty by "a little
innocence."

Maslow describes "innocence" as one of the atti—
tudes found in the psychologically healthy people he has
studied. Like cummings, Maslow finds that a "healthily
growing" adult retains the child's curiosity, his inno-
cent ability to explore, wonder at and delight in "the
moment" (23E, 44). According to cummings' poem, "inno-
cence" is an attitude toward life which may be adopted

by anyone if "they" (who until now "could not learn to

21

look" outside themselves, could not perceive anything in
the world which would excite them) would only let "inno-
cence" be their teacher. Then they would be freed "from
the reality of all nothing," from the state of mind in
which the world seems meaningless. Maslow agrees. If
one has no "apprehensions," if one responds to the world
as a child responds, "because the child is moving totally
'here-now'," there is "no worry, no anxiety, no appre-
hension, no foreboding" (EEEE. 265). In cummings' poem
"a little innocence" can make the individual feel "most
perfect gay" instead of the "sheer despairing" s/he felt
in his or her former attitude of pessimism or cynicism.
Instead of thinking of life as meaningless and chaotic,
s/he will be able to appreciate the beauty implicit in
the "here" and now. "Luminous" joy in the beauty of
everyday experiences can banish "dark" fear as the rising
sun transforms darkness into light. Cummings' description
of the ideal attitude toward life as "a little innocence"
correlates with Maslow's description of a healthy per-
son's outlook, that is, "spontaneously curious, explor-
atory, wondering, interested, . . . experiencing, delight-
ing, enjoying" the minutia of everyday living.

Again and again in cummings' poetry we find the
poet singing a celebration of the particular, the minute,

the immediate. In poem number 37 from 12 poems the poet

22

sings a sonnet of appreciation for "this miracle of

summer night," a falling star, and "a single kiss":

now that,more nearest even than your fate

and mine(or any truth beyond perceive)
quivers this miracle of summer night

her trillion secrets touchably alive

--while and all mysteries which i or you
(blinded by merely things believable)
could only fancy we should never know

are unimaginably ours to feel--

how should some world(we marvel)doubt,for just
sweet terrifying the particular

moment it takes one very falling most
(there:did you see it?)star to disappear,

that hugest whole creation may be less
incalculable than a single kiss

 

 

(italics mine)

As the Shakespearean sonnet form suggests, the argument
of the poem is set up primarily as a tension between two
opposing viewpoints. While "some world" of doubters
"doubt," the poet and his beloved stand together, looking
up at a summer night sky, watching the "trillion secrets"
of the visible stars. The lovers £33; "all mysteries"

of the universe which "some world" of thinkers have
always questioned--such as "your fate and mine," and
"any" other "truth" which lies outside the realm of

our senses. The poet explains to his companion, and
indirectly to his reader, that pure sensory experience

is more complex and wonderful than any rational

23

classifying, explaining, or philosophizing could begin

to logically explain. Further, "all mysteries," including
the "trillion secrets" of "this miracle of summer night"
with "her trillion secrets" being "touchably alive," can
be felt by anyone open to the wonder of their mystery.

In The Farther Reaches gg Human Nature, Maslow

 

 

reports that one characteristic of the peak experience is
"a kind of 'innocence' of perceiving and behaving." Many
"highly creative people" have described this feeling as an
aspect of their peak experiences, reporting the feeling
of being "guileless, without 3 priori expectations, with-
out 'shou1ds' or 'oughts', without . . . dogmas, habits,
. . . as being ready to receive whatever happens to be
the case without surprise, shock, indignation, or denial"
(64). Maslow notes that children "are more able to be
receptive in this undemanding way" than are the more
experienced, less spontaneous persons.

Anyone who can accept and be comfortable with the
idea that there are no cut and dried answers to man's
perennial questions about the meaning of life and the
nature of death ("your fate/and mine") can share with
cummings the feeling that "all mysteries . . . are un—
imaginably ours to feel." Cummings and his companion(s)
marvel at the momentary phenomenon of a beautiful shooting
or "falling . . . star"; and we chuckle together over the

question being asked by "some world" of strange, mixed-up

24

people: which is less incalculable, "that hugest whole

 

creation?" or "a single kiss?" For anyone who can feel

the touchably alive quality of all such mysteries, both

 

 

phenomena are completely incalculable; neither mystery

can be totally reduced to a scientific formula or theo-
retically defined. Both are complex, wonderful, "mys—

terious" experiences which the rational faculty pauses

before, while the whole human being "feels" awe, rever-
ence and love.1

In his nonlectures cummings emphasizes the

emotional connotations of feel and feeling, implying

 

that a consciously emotional commitment or Openness to
experience is the "aliveness" he appreciates and per-
sonally enjoys: "To feel something is to be alive,"
cummings tells us. Mystery, aliveness and Art are
synonymous with feeling: "A mystery is something
immeasurable." In so far as every person "may be
immeasurable, art is the mystery of every person. . . .
In so far as every human being is an artist,skies and
mountains and oceans and butterflies are immeasurable;
and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable
can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art;
nothing which cannot be art is true:and everything
untrue doesn't matter a good God damn . . ." (ESE! 68).

Mystery, aliveness and feeling are qualities which exist

 

in the world outside ourselves as well as being an

25

attitude inside each individual. That attitude, called

innocence in some poems, is mostly what being an artist

 

consists of; and any human being may adopt the attitude

of innocence, may bring out the artist in him/herself.

 

Lines five through seven describe "i or you" as
"we" would still be if "we" had not become aware of that

better way of seeing reality:

5 --while and all mysteries which i or you
(blinded by merely things believable)
7 could only fancy g3 should never know

That is, "i or you" still would have been "blinded" by

our classifying, our philosophizing, our analyzing and
our preconceptions (beliefs) about what the universe
"should" be like. Instead, speaker and lover enjoy the
flash of a shooting star--a momentary, fleeting perception
of beauty--as a perceptual mystery which should NOT be
logically analyzed or questioned. The two lovers simply
£23E_the wonder of the experience. The total experience
of wonder results from the ability of human eyes to record
the fact of a meteorite glowing incandescent as it hits
the earth's atmOSphere.

Cummings is aware of the complexity of factors
which contribute to the experience, as we may see by
studying the structure of the poem. His syntax is quite
complex, the grammatically correct elements carefully

arranged so as to create a sense of simultaneity of

26

experience--perception of the star, thought, feeling
and commentary are carefully integrated in the poetic
presentation.

Cummings has studied his emotional and mental
responses to the physical perception of a shooting star
and has presented those complex responses in written,
sequential form. This seems to be the kind of activity
Maslow is referring to when he says that the healthy
person studies each problem separately, studies "£3 and
its nature" and tries "to perceive within it the intrin-
sic interrelationships." Such a method is opposed to
that of the person who, "confronting an unknown painting
hurriedly runs back through his knowledge of art history
to remember how he is supposed to react." Such a person
"then enjoys it if he is supposed to, and doesn't if he
is not supposed to" (EEEE. 62-63).

Absorption in the work of art before us enables
us to be "attracted by mystery, by the unfamiliar, by the
novel, by the ambiguous and contradictory, by the unusual
and unexpected." In such cases we leave behind our nor-
mal "anxiety-allaying mechanisms and defenses" of sus-i
picion, fear or guardedness. The state of mind cummings
would have us be in when we approach every experience
is the "positive attitude" Maslow describes of persons
in peak experiences: "No blocks against the matter-in-

hand means that we let it flow in upon us. We let it

27

wreak its will upon us. We let it have its way. We let
it be itself. This makes it easier to be Taoistic in
the sense of humility, noninterference, receptivity"
(EEEE. 67).

The poetry of e. e. cummings asks us to trust our
feelings about life, to set aside our classifying and
analyzing and to concentrate on fully appreciating 333E
moment of our experience:

life is more true than reason will deceive

(more secret or than madness did reveal)

deeper is life—than lose:higher than have
--but beauty is more each than living's all

(#52, l x 1, first stanza)

If we insist on categorizing and generalizing every exper-
ience, if we fail to see each object, person and event
as a single, unprecedented adventure, then we are mis-
using "reason."2 Very few things in life are so simple
that they may be accurately perceived merely as ciphers
in some rational category. Instead, cummings asks us to
pay attention to "each" object or person, to perceive the
complex combination of identifiable qualities which are
embodied in "each" object of perception:

multiplied with infinity sans if

the mightiest meditations of mankind

cancelled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

(#52, l x 1, second stanza)

28

The contemplation of "one merely opening leaf" fills the
speaker with awe as the leaf enacts the natural mystery of
growth. Men have written thousands of words failing to
understand life; meanwhile the leaf simply opens, lives,
grows.

Maslow describes a similar attitude toward life's
experiences as one element of perception in the peak
experience: "Self-actualizing people are more able to
perceive the world as if it were independent not only of
them but also of human beings in general. This also tends
to be true of the average human being in his highest
moments, i.e. in his peak experiences" (EEE, 76). This
type of cognition, "because it makes human-irrelevance
more possible, enables us thereby to see more truly the
nature of the object itself." In the case of this poem. \
we are better able to see the "nearness" of "one merely
opening leaf."

"Reason" is portrayed in the first two stanzas of
the poem as obscuring the mystery of life experiences by

a reductive process symbolized by the words lose, have

 

and EE. Eg§g_and Egyg_are ways people habitually relate
to objects around them. Things are often classified as
gigg_or theirs; we either gig or lggg something we thought
we wanted or were striving for; we may be goal-oriented,
seeking money so that we may control or E313 property or

prestige. Maslow agrees with cummings, identifying as

29

"deficiency-motivated need" the tendency to consider an
object or activity as merely "a means, an instrument, not
having self-contained worth but having only exchange
value" (EEEE. 262).

Cummings' poem also insists that liES is much
"more true, more secret 33" (full of more possibilities),
"deeper" and "higher" than ego-centered goals. Maslow
reports that the self-actualizing person, when involved
in a peak experience, is "self-forgetful, ego-transcend-
ing, and unselfish" (EEEE. 262). The self-actualizing
person experiences a "transcendence of ego, self, and
selfishness" when s/he is responding to the intrinsic
worth of "external tasks, causes, duties, responsibilities
to others and to the world of reality" (EEEE, 271).

In cummings' poems the term "reason" refers to
mental processes which Maslow also considers to be
"deficiency motivated," thinking processes which involve
"only abstract categorized, schematized classifying,"
the reduction of everything to abstraction. In contrast,
the self-actualizing person perceives both "concretely
and abstractly, all aspects at once" (EEEE. 263).

Because of the synergistic unity of their rational
and irrational faculties, their conscious and unconscious
perceptions, healthy people are more aware of the “limi-
tations of purely abstract thinking, of verbal thinking

and of analytic thinking" (TPB, 208): "If our hope is to

30

describe the world fully, a place is necessary for pre-
verbal, metaphorical, concrete experience, intuitive and
esthetic types of cognition, for there are certain aspects
of reality which can be cognized in no other way" (23E,
208). Pure rational thought, according to Maslow, is
limited to dealing with reality through overly simplistic,
reductionary concepts. Science tends to reject the irra-
tional as an aspect of experience which is not objectively
measurable and therefore is to be ignored, if not denied
as "real" experience altogether: "Even in science we know
(1) that creativity has its roots in the nonrational,
(2) that language is and must always be inadequate to
describe total reality, (3) that any abstract concept
leaves out much of reality and (4) that what we call
'knowledge' (which is usually reductive abstraction or
oversimplified definition) often serves to blind us to
portions of reality not covered by the abstraction. That
is, knowledge makes us more able to see some things, but
Eggg able to see other things. Abstract knowledge has
its dangers as well as its uses" (23E. 208).

In poem #64 from 22,29223 (1958), cummings' per-
sona describes a peak experience in which "the object"
is "uncontaminated and unconfused with self." The violet
is appreciated as "intrinsically interesting for its own
sake," and is "permitted to be itself"--perceptions
which Maslow has described as "self-actualizing" (EEEE.

262):

31

out of the lie of no

rises a truth of yes

(only herself and who

illimitably is)

making fools understand

(like wintry me) that not

all matterings of mind

equal one violet
Here cummings describes a transcendental experience in
abstract, conceptual terms. The only images of concrete
reality are the suggestions of winter and the closing
"violet" flower. The speaker has been depressed or in
some other state of "wintry" deprivation—motivated nor-
mality. But suddenly his ability to experience the beauty
of a single flower, something totally independent of his
own ego, provides him with a moment of transcendence,
which he celebrates in this short poem: "out of the lie
of no," a negating state of mind, "rises a truth of yes,"
rises a perception of a flower in which (in Maslow's
terms) the violet is "seen as independent" and valuable
"in its own right" (EEEE. 261). The fact of this one
flower, fully appreciated by the self-actualizing person,
is seen by the poet as "human-irrelevant." This is the
perception of a person experiencing "Being-cognition,"
or having a "peak experience," as opposed to the "defi-
ciency cognition" of the object as "relevant to human
concerns, e.g. what good is it, what can it be used for,

is it good for or dangerous to people" (261). Such a

negative, rational approach to a flower is for "fools,"

32

including the poet in less enlightened states of mind
("like wintry me"). The best attitude to take toward a
beautiful fact in the natural world is that of the poet
in the final two lines of the poem: "not/all matterings
of mind/equal one violet."

In the final poem of 13 pggg§_cummings described
his own "holistic" perception of reality. Life attains
a unity of spiritual and material reality if viewed with
an open attitude, not pre-formed by theories or philoso-
phies from the past. A "world" in the poem is any per-
ceptual process or system of thought which excludes any
portion of the experiential whole: physical, spiritual,
magical, emotional, mental, sensual. Maslow specifically
argues this same concern over Western man's tendency to
dichotomize in all his thought, arguing as cummings does
that the healthier attitude is one which integrates and
synthesizes experience: "It is extremely important, even
crucial, to give up our 3,000-year-old habit of dichoto-
mizing, splitting and separating in the style of Aris-
totelian logic ("A and Not-A are wholly different from
each other, and are mutually exclusive. Take your
choice--one RE the other. But you can't have both."L
Difficult though it may be, we must learn to think
holistically rather than atomistically. All these
"opposites" "are in fact heirarchically-integrated,

especially in healthier people, and one of the prOper

33

goals of therapy is to move from dichotomizing and
splitting toward integration of seemingly irreconcilable
opposites" (23E, 174).

Cummings sees the objects around him as imbued
with a living, spiritual quality. Spirit and object are
a single, inseparable entity which must be viewed as a

unified whole:

 

all worlds have halfsight, seeing either with
life's eye (which is if things seem spirits) or
(if spirits in the guise of things appear)
death's:any world must always half perceive.
Only whose vision can create the whole

(being forever born a foolishwise

proudhumble citizen of ecstasies

more steep than climb can time with all his years)
he's free into the beauty of the truth;

and strolls the axis of the universe

--1ove. Each believing world denies, whereas
your lover (looking through both life and death)
timelessly celebrates the merciful

wonder no world deny may or believe
(2; poems, #73)

Here cummings tells us that any philosophical system
which denies the existence of either "things" (the con-
crete, observable world outside ourselves) or "spirits"
(life-force, energy or metaphysical reality) "must always
half perceive" (sees only half the truth). Any system

chooses between components of experience, ranks parts in

34

hierarchic or chronological order, separates elements
which are integrated aspects of a whole.

The first four lines may best be paraphrased with
Maslow's help. Maslow's healthy individuals enjoy a
"healthy unconscious, . . . a healthy irrationality."
Their unconscious desires are "more integrated" and
"less separated" from the conclusions of their "rational,
cognitive thinking" (EEE, 208-09). This unity of thought,
feeling, desire and physical ability is similar to cum-
mings' "proudhumble citizen of ecstasies," the poet him-
self and anyone else who shares cummings' life view.

Only persons who perceive the unity of these philosophi-
cal elements can perceive the "merciful wonder" which is
life as viewed by one who loves life: "Only whose vision
can create the whole/ . . . he's free into the beauty of
the truth." The "truth" is seen by the individual who
loves living, who appreciates the "miracle" of £93 and
who "celebrates" the unity of spiritual with physical

as he perceives it to be operating in his everyday exper-
ience. Maslow has described just such a unified vision,
asserting that it is a normal perceptual experience for
the self-actualizing people he has studied.

Poem #73 serves as an example of Maslow's thir-
teenth quality of the peak-experience: "In peak-
experiences, the dichotomies, polarities, and conflicts

of life tend to be transcended or resolved. In other

35

words there tends to be a moving toward the perception
of unity and integration in the world. The person him-
self tends to move toward fusion, integration, and unity
and away from splitting, conflicts, oppositions."

Maslow agrees with cummings; both note the limi-
tations of abstract, analytical thinking for its tendency
to oversimplify, to reduce the complexity of life to a
simple, but false, set of measurable variables. A science
based purely on manipulation of observable variables
denies the reality of man's emotional, irrational, sub-
jective reactions to his world: "Science and education,
being too exclusively abstract, verbal and bookish don't
have enough place for raw, concrete, esthetic experience,
especially of the subjective happenings inside oneself"
(EEE, 209). Maslow sees the need for a balanced con-
sideration of abstract reasoning and irrational, emotional
sensation in his quest to objectify and understand the
psychological states and processes which occur in healthy
human beings.

Both agree that the goal to be achieved is a
"holistic" view of 1ife--a unification of heart and head
resulting in a sense of the coexistence of apparently
conflicting or Opposing elements in spectrum-like inte-
gration. Maslow and cummings both report the existence
of a 1ifeview which emphasizes the yEglg_instead of

concentrating on the fragmented parts of a perceptive

36

experience. Cummings says: "all worlds have halfsight,
seeing either with/ life's eye . . . or/ . . . death's:
any world must always half perceive./ Only whose vision

can create the whole/ . . . he's free into the beauty of

 

the truth;/ and strolls the axis of the universe/--love."
For the poet, "each believing world denies" a part of
reality and a part of the self "whereas your lover"--

the person whose attitude is one of love and care, empathy
and openness--"timelessly celebrates the merciful wonder/
no world deny may or believe." In Maslow's words, "The
ultimate of abstract, analytical thinking is the greatest
simplification possible. . . . Our mastery of the world
is enhanced thereby, but its richness may be lost as a
forfeit, unless we learn to value perception-with-love-
and-care, free-floating attention . . . which enrich the
experience instead of impoverishing it" (EEE, 209).

As Norman Friedman has explained, cummings "takes
extremes and puts love beyond them: . . . his vision is
directed toward a state of unified awareness beyond, out-
side of, and apart from . . . conflicts." In the poem
cummings' speaker tells us that the lover of life cele-
brates all elements of existence (death included) and
thereby transcends all mere space and time categories:
"Each believing world denies, whereas/your lover(1ooking
through both life and death)/timelessly celebrates the

merciful/wonder no world deny may or believe." In these

37

lines we see as Friedman does that when cummings "reaches
those moments of pure transcendence--as he often does-—
he gives us a vision of what it means to achieve, beyond
achievement, our full and fully human potential" (TCV, 12).
Maslow calls these moments "peak experiences," the highest
points of human experience, points at which people are
most fully human, living up to their highest potential.
Poem #65 from XAIPE praises the beauty of the

natural world and celebrates an open "yes" attitude which
allows human beings to transcend logical distinctions
between matter and spirit by seeing physical objects in
the natural world as infused with a spiritual essence.
Material and spiritual elements of reality become fused
into a transcendent unity when viewed with cummings'
"yes" attitude:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-~1ifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(Now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

38

The poem is divided into fourteen lines separated into
four stanzas, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet,
the traditional appearance of the Shakespearean sonnet.

The stanza format leads us to expect a "serious, personal,"

artistically integrated statement about life.3

Cummings'
sonnet divides itself into four discrete thoughts, as
indicated by the stanzaic division;4 but as the rhyme
scheme and punctuation indicate, the first and third,
second and fourth stanzas are directly related with one
another, juxtaposing the two ideas visually. Juxtapo-
sition here indicates the essential unity of the two
entities being presented, the perceived outer world and
the inner attitude of the perceiver. This unity cor-
relates with Maslow's description of the state of "Being'
Cognition" in which there is a "resolution of dichotomies,
polarities, conflicts," with the "transcendence of dicho-
tomies" being brought about by rising "from dichotomies
to superordinate wholes" (EEEE, 272).

The poet gives thanks not only for the things out-

side himself (day, trees, sky), but also for his own posi-

 

 

tive ygg attitude toward life. Because of his positive
response to life the poet sees 35333 as alive, exciting
things with individual spiritual and physical existence
apart from the perceiver's mind. Yet both speaker and
trees are also seen as cohabitants of "the gay/great

illimitably happening earth," a natural world which

rr

.4.

..
«‘15

39

includes "everything/which is natural which is infinite
which is yes." Both the perceiver and the objects per-
ceived have their separate existence while being part of
a larger whole. This compares favorably with another
quality Maslow describes as healthy: "transcendence of
the We-They polarity," which means "to ascend up to the
level of synergy" (EEEE, 272).

The natural world which man physically and con-
sciously perceives and the infinite which man can only
feel or irrationally perceive are unified by the ygg,
the miraculous, healthy attitude any person may adopt if
s/he wishes. Egg is the attitude through which spiritual
and physical, rational and irrational unity may be
attained by Egyone. Thus "i thank You God" exemplifies
the sixteenth element of Maslow's definition: "The con-
ception of heaven that emerges from the peak experience
is one which exists all the time all around us, always
available to step into for a little while at least."

The beautiful world is there outside the poet, waiting

to be perceived by any human content with merely being,

 

a person with the prOperly open, positive attitude toward
reality.

The second and fourth stanzas are set off from
the main argument of the poem by parentheses indicating,
in this case, the poet's introspective self-analysis. As

he praises the beautiful world outside himself, the poet

4O

realizes parenthetically that he has personally awakened
to a full consciousness of "reality" as defined in stanzas
one and three: "(i who have died am alive again today

. . ."). And the poet celebrates his newly discovered
or rediscovered ygg attitude which enables him to see

and hear life's experiences completely--physically,
rationally, and emotionally: "(now the ears of my ears
awake and/now the eyes of my eyes are Opened)." Cummings
is one of the people who can fully perceive the complex,
unified world due to his loving, receptive attitude.

This is one of the characteristics of the peak exper-
ience, according to Maslow: "the universe is perceived
as a unified whole" (EEEE, 273).

Cummings is demonstrating for us his experience
of a spring-like ritual of rebirth. He has supplied the
script so that we may join him.3 De-emphasize thought of
the self, says the lower case "i";4 the emphasis (capi-
talization) is only on "You, God." Maslow agrees; cri-
terion eleven of the peak experience definition is:
"Being-cognition in the peak experience is much more
passive and receptive, much more humble, than normal per-
ception is. It is much more ready to listen and much
more able to hear." In the third stanza the poem sug-
gests the limitations of man's physical faculties of
perception; but intuitive perception is not circumscribed

by such limitations:

41

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You ?

One possible reading of this section is to see it as a

rhetorical question in which mere human beings could not

 

possibly doubt the existence of You. You refers ambigu-

ously to the God of the first line and the everything of

 

line three (including the leaping greenly spirits g;

 

trees). This amazing day includes mankind as well as

 

 

everything outside man. All aspects of this amazing day

 

 

are available to the perception of anyone who will open
him/herself to the power of external natural presences.
The trees in the poem share with men a spiritual
quality, another “mystery" for cummings which he "feels"
to be true. It does not need to be explained, according
to the cummings philosophy; it simply "is." In 3, six

nonlectures cummings describes his distrust of logical

 

constructions devoid of the test of "feeling": "No
simple (if abstruse) system of measurable soi-disant
facts, which anybody can think and believe and know--or,
when another system becomes popular, and the erstwhile
facts become fictions--can unthink and unbelieve and
unknow--has power over a complex truth which he, and he
alone, can feel. . . . One thing . . . does always con-
cern this individual: fidelity to himself" (Egg. 82).

Cummings would apply the test of his compassion for

 

'71

42

and sympathy with all living things to any philosophical
theories about "the nature of life." And in this poem
he is attempting to share his feelings about "Nature"
with his readers.

Cummings said in a letter to Hildegarde Watson
on January 30, 1960: " . . . Well do I remember taking
AJ (Freddy) Ayer--the foremost '1ogical positivist' quote-
philosopher-unquote extant--for a promenade near Joy Farm;
during which stroll, my guest observed (probably anent
some entirely spontaneous tribute to Nature which had
escaped me) 'you're almost an animist, aren't you.‘
Quick-as-a-flash-~without thinking at all--I deeply
surprised myself by replying 'almost? I AM an animist'."
Cummings sees the objects around him as imbued with a
living, spiritual quality. Spirit and object are a
single, inseparable entity which must be viewed as a
unified whole and not as consisting of predominantly
one element or the other.

Images of birth and awakening flood over us as
we read the script. If we allow the stage directions to
prod our imagination, we feel the jg; SE.X£X£E cummings
is expressing for us. Cummings builds his poem around
objects and experiences familiar to everyone (EEE! gEy.
Egggg). But he infuses each object with an implied
animation by giving his sun a birthday, infusing Egggg

with legging spirits. In the process he explodes our

 

43

memory of trees from a visual recollection of sticks
rooted in the ground into mysterious, elfin creatures
capable of generating wonder and amazement for anyone
who will see things from the poet's point of view.
The destruction of limits, the breaking out of
stereotyped conceptions of natural things, growth of
sensitivity to the wonders of life as cummings perceives
it--these are the effects of cummings' poem. Thus, "1
thank You God" exemplifies the last element in Maslow's
definition of a peak-experience: "What has been called
the 'unitive consciousness' is often given in peak-
experiences, i.e., a sense of the sacred glimpsed in
and through the particular instance of the momentary,
the secular, the worldly."
Norman Friedman has described the transcendental
aspect of cummings' vision in these terms:
The poetry of transcendence . . . tries to recapture
or reawaken . . . a purer vision, one that will be
outside . . . categories and consequently free of
the usual polarities. . . . The ultimate awareness
we must try to grasp, according to this . . . world
view, is not so much an integration of polarities--
thought and feeling, for example--as a rising above
them.7

Cummings' poems often begin with rational categories and

distinctions, but his "yes" vision carries us to a new

comprehension of the larger whole (or synergy) in which

the parts participate. What at first seems to be a

paradoxical either/or relationship between opposites is

44

often seen finally as Opposite sides Of a single coin,

two ways Of looking at a single entity, each side Of the
coin expressing a different point Of view or attitude

or feeling about the metal which makes up the thickness

Of the coin. The material Of the coin, that which unites
opposing views and is the essence about which the Opposing

Opinions have been expressed--is "love."

CHAPTER I I --NOTES

1"Feel" is defined in the 1955 edition Of The

Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical PrinciplEET
ed. C. T. Onions, 3rd ed., rEVised with Addenda (OxfOrd:
The Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 685. Pertinent denotations
are listed here:

"(transitive verb:) TO perceive by . . . touch,

. . . smell, or taste. TO perceive mentally. TO

be conscious of, to experience. TO perceive men-

tally. TO be conscious Of, to experience. TO

undergo consciously. TO be sensibly affected by;

also, in transferred and figurative use, Of inani-

mate Objects. TO have sympathy with, compassion

for. . . . TO believe on grounds not distinctly

perceived; to have a cOnviction Of (a fact)."
The definition Of "feeling" (in the same source) emphasizes
the emotional and intuitive aspects of the word "feel,"
bringing the connotations Of the two words more closely
parallel to the senses in which cummings normally uses the
two terms (the following is an extract):

"The condition Of being emotionally affected;
an emotion; emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies.
Susceptibility to the higher emotions; especially
tenderness for the sufferings Of others. Pleasurable
or painful consciousness. In psychology, a fact or
state Of consciousness (J. S. Mill); a generic term
comprising sensation, desire and emotion only (Kant);
an intuitive cognitIOn or belief. In painting, that
quality in a work Of art which depicts the mental
emotion Of the painter.

(As a past participle:) Sentient, capable of
sensation. Accessible to emotion; sympathetic, com-
passionate. Deeply Or sensibly felt or realized,
heart-felt, vivid."

 

 

2When cummings speaks Of "Reason" as "deceiving"
us, he refers tO twentieth century America's infatuation
with logical analysis and scientific methodology. Charles
Hampden-Turner says in his bOOk Radical Man: The Process
9: Psycho-Social Development (Cambridge, Mass.: SOHenkman

 

 

 

45

46

Publishing CO., 1970), p. 8: that "when science spreads
its mantle Of prestige over all those aspects Of social
life which lend themselves most easily to Observation,
then outward behavior and appearance are elevated above
inner conviction. It is no use for Martin Luther King to
declare movingly, 'I have a dream--that one day men will
be judged not by the color Of their skins but by the con-
tent Of their characters'--as any proponent Of the scien-
tific method will explain, content Of character and dreams
are extremely inferential and represent at best 'soft
data'." Hampden-Turner goes on to say that one can make

a science out Of the study Of "skin color, ethnic group,
income position," and other concrete, "measurable" aspects
Of "visible outward behavior." He attacks the social
sciences for failing tO "explore the depths Of human feel-
ings and experiences." Hampden-Turner is a social scien-
tist who is trying to reform the methods Of his science

so that it will take into account elements not yet con-
sidered in the study Of man. These elements are "central
to man's deepest needs," and he specifically mentions
"love" along with other types Of emotions or "feelings"

as having been neglected.

Cummings reacted against what Hampden-Turner calls
the "reductive" tendencies Of scientific methodology as
practiced by "elitist, heirarchical" scientists who tend
to be "anxious tO control others" (Hampden-Turner, p. 13).
Hampden-Turner insists that the men who are most com-
fortable with the abstract, conceptualizing techniques Of
modern sciences emulate "abstraction, reification and
deadness" above all other ways Of approaching their human
subjects. He asks that the social sciences take into
account the findings of "humanistic psychology," with
specific attention to Abraham Maslow's theories.

3Charles B. Wheeler, The Design Of Poetry (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1966), p. 260.

4Alex Preminger, ed., Encyclopedia Of Poetry and

Poetics, entry by L. J. Z. (Princeton University Press,

, p. 781: "Shakespearean patterns . . . invite a
division Of thought into three quatrains and a closing
Of summarizing couplet. . . . The Open rhyme schemes tend
tO impress the fourfold structure on the reader's ear and
to suggest a stepped progression toward the closing
couplet."

 

 

5Cummings describes his own experience, acting
out his lifeview for the reader's benefit. A suggestion
that the reader may follow along and experience the poet's
excitement with him is implied, never Openly stated.

47

Cummings performs a little play for us, in which his
attitude toward life is vividly expressed. The first
person, present-tense presentation makes the experience
he reports seem immediate and real tO the reader. Cum-
mings seems to be describing a "peak experience" as he
lives it. The poem reads like a testimonial, celebrating
the experience as it happens.

6"Concerning the small 'i': did it never strike
you as significant that, Of all God's children, only
English and Americans apotheosize their ego by capital—
izing a pronoun whose equivalent is in French 'je', in
German 'ich', and in Italian 'iO'?" (Letters, p. 195)

7"Introduction" to the Twentieth Century Views
series E. E. Cummin 5, ed. Norman Friedman (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prent1ce-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 6.

CHAPTER III

CUMMINGS' ETHICAL SYSTEM: TRANSCENDENCE

THROUGH LOVE

love is a place

& through this place Of
love move

(with brightness Of peace)
all places

(#58. as EELS:
first stanza)

William Carlos Williams said in a 1945 essay that
if "a great number" Of men "took to heart" cummings'
request that we love one another and our world, if men
would dO as cummings asked and simply Open themselves to
the wonder Of life and the beauty inherent in all exist-
ing persons and things, "the effect would be . . . a
veritable revolution . . . Of morals . . . Of love."
According tO Williams, "much or even all Of cummings'

1 Williams defines cum-

poems are evidences Of love."
mings' variety Of "love" as looking to Christianity
"solely for what that says to the christian (with a

small 'c') conscience." Williams sees that cummings'

poetry tells the reader tO "ignore the dress in which

48

49

the Word comes to you and lOOk tO the Life Of which that
is the passing image." As Williams points out, cummings'
poems "lay bare the actual experience Of love . . . in
the chance terms which his environment happens to make
apparent tO him."2 Williams himself tried to discover
images Of love in his "local" environment, expressing his
ethic through details experienced in the everyday life

Of the common people; thus he was especially sensitive to
this aspect Of cummings' poetry.

For cummings, "love" is an attitude toward exper-
ience and a way Of life. In poem #4 of ZE’pgggg the poet
tells us "it's love by whom/(my beautiful friend)/the
gift tO live/is without until:/. . . love was and shall/
be this only truth." In the poem £233 is both a feeling
which two people share with each other and a way Of
relating to life experiences which allows them to per-

ceive the beauty Of the physical and spiritual world:

SONG

but we've the may
(for you are in love
and i am)tO sing,

my darling:while

Old worlds and young
(big little and all
worlds)merely have
the must to say

50

and the when to do

is exactly theirs

(dull worlds or keen;
big little and all)
but lost or win

(come heaven,come hell)
precisely ours

is the now to grow

it's love by whom
(my beautiful friend)
the gift to live

is without until:
but pitiful they've
(big little and all)
nO power beyond

the trick to seem

their joys turn woes

and right goes wrong
(dim worlds or bright;
big little and all)
whereas(my sweet)

our summer in fall

and in winter our spring
is the yes of yes

love was and shall
be this only truth

(a dream Of a deed,
born not to die)

but worlds are made
Of hello and goodbye:
glad sorry or both
(big little and all)

Love is an attitude which turns fall into our summer,

 

makes spring happen for the lovers 1g winter. For lovers
always view life's mysteries with a springlike feeling
which is EEg'yg§_g£'yg§, a positive, loving approach to
experience and to other human beings.

Cummings also uses Egyg_in a very personal sense,
indicating through his love poems to Marion Morehouse

Cummings many Of the healthy ways the feeling of love

51

can work between two people who are not prevented psy-
chologically from loving authentically. Two poems from
Z} pggg§_will serve as a small sample Of cummings' many
poems which deal with the theme of love between man and
wife.
In the sestet of poem #38, the poet sings a

sonnet of self-transcendence:

losing through you what seemed myself,i find

selves unimaginably mine;beyond

sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my Spirit's born:

yours is the darkness Of my soul's return

--you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
The lover seems tO lose his identity in the interaction
between himself and his beloved; yet the very act Of
experiencing fully another's Being is a growing experience
for the poet. The colon in the fourth line Of the sestet
tells us that the line before the colon and the line
immediately following it are to be thought Of as two
parts Of an integrated whole. The loved one acts as a
catalyst for the continual birth or reawakening of the
poet's appreciative spirit. The poet feels reborn as he
responds with his whole being to the EigEE Of his lover's
unique self.

"Being-love" is defined by Maslow in Toward 5.

Psychology g£_Being as "Love for the Being Of another

 

person, unneeding love, unselfish love" (TPB, 42).

52

The healthy, self-actualizing person feels that his/her
love "in a profound but testable sense, creates the
partner." The beloved's love "gives him a self-image,
it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling Of love-worthi-
ness, all Of which permit him tO grow" (33E, 43). When
cummings' speaker reports that "losing through you what
seemed myself,i find/selves unimaginably mine" and that
"yours is the light by which my spirit's born," he is
expressing a healthy state of "Being-love." The speaker
of the poem is reporting a "transcendence of the selfish
Self" (EEEE. 272).

Following the initial infusion Of his lover's
unselfish love into his formerly “selfish self,“ the
poet's E221 returns to its individual existence, his
beloved's presence remaining always a part Of him,
"beyond/sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears," as
all-pervasive as EEgEE and darkness. According tO
Maslow, another characteristic Of a self-actualizing
person is that s/he is "able to be strong and responsible
in addition to being dependent, tO transcend one's own
weakness, and to rise to being strong" (EEEE, 273). The
speaker in cummings' poem achieves a new, transcendent
sense of his own ability to overcome fear and sorrow
through his "Being-love" relationship with the beloved.

The poem "one's not half two," from his 1944 book

1 x 1, demonstrates that cummings' conception Of love as

53

a unifying, holistic (and psychologically healthy) exper-
ience had solidified as early as the 19405:

one's not half two. It's two are halves Of one:

which halves reintegrating,shall occur

nO death and any quantity;but than

all numerable mosts the actual more
In this first stanza cummings insists that "one times one"
(the title of this book of poems) equals gg£g_than one
when love enters the picture. If each person remains an
individual "one," then a marriage Of the two individuals
through "Being-love" will produce "an isomorphism" in
Maslow's terms-—"a molding Of each to each other, a
better and better fitting together or complementarily,
a melting into one" (EEEE. 71).

This sense Of two persons becoming, through love,

"more than you and i" is also stated in poem #10 in

Z§_poems:

because it's

Spring
things

dare to do people

(& not
the other way

round)because it

's A
pril

Lives lead their own

54
persons(in
stead
Of everybodyelse's)but

what's wholly
marvellous my

Darling

is that you &
i are more than you

& i(be

ca
US

e It's we)

In this light, playful celebration Of Spring, the poet
plays with punctuation, spelling, words-within-words

and capitalization to sing Of Spring and love. Spring-
time, for cummings, is not merely a time Of the year.
Throughout his poems we find the word Spring used tO
represent a feeling Of growth, vitality, aliveness,
happiness and love. In this poem "because it's/Spring"
all kinds Of wonderful things are happening: peOple are
getting excited about things, seeing beauty where they
never noticed it before; people are being totally them-
selves, acting as they like tO act, acting as they Eggi
("Lives lead their own persons"); and Spring is the state
Of lgyg in which "you &/i are more than you/& i"--we are
more than two separate individuals, symbolized by the
position Of ygp and E’in separate lines, separated by

double-spacing--and the reason we are greater than we

55

were as individuals is "because It's we." Love creates
a greater whole than either individual could possibly
anticipate. The speaker tells us that his love (in

Maslow's words) is ego-transcending. Maslow tells us

 

that "in the '1ove' experience we may . . . speak Of
identification Of the perceiver and the perceived, a
fusion Of what was two into a new and larger whole"
(EBEE, 71).

Cummings uses several technical devices to empha-
size his pOint visually. The feeling or attitude which
is like experiencing Spring is a state of excitement, a
recognition that everything has a spiritual aliveness Of
its own. This is demonstrated by the repeated combi-
nations Of £5, signifying a state Of being or aliveness,

with 13! a static pronoun, by contraction: it's, it/‘s

 

(emphasizing through spacing the change from a static ip
tO a state Of being, ip_+ i§.= it's). And in the final
line Eplg signifies by capitalization the larger, more
important state Of being resulting from the unifying
influence Of love.

Capitalization is used to emphasize those things
which are most important to the poet: Spring; 5 (indi-
eating a unique experience); A/pril (=Spring); Eiyg§_
(individuals acting in a unique, personal way; people
being themselves); Darling (the poet's beloved); and

It's (the combination Of you with i into a 33, a

56

togetherness more beautiful than either of us taken
separately). One other instance Of capitalization is
found in the second stanza, which consists of two lines
with one word in each line: Spring / thingS. Each Of

the two words is made up Of six letters and cummings
further emphasizes this numerical symmetry by capitaliz-
ing the "S" which begins and ends the stanza. Parentheses
are used to set Off the contrasting, clarifying phrases
just as we might use them in ordinary speech.

Spacing is used to emphasize visually the words
which can be found within words: iplig is made up Of
the pronoun ip_and the verb ig; E'is ambiguously an lg
(juxtaposed in the same line with Lg), a state Of unique
existence, and also a part Of spring, Of A/pril; (i3
both tells us that Eiygg are found Epside persons--life
is the essence of any person--and also combines with
gpggg (a static place or position being filled by some—

one else) tO form instead g£_everybody else's [life].

 

Cummings Often finds words within words, concepts within
larger constructs, his poems Opening to the reader like
a set of Chinese boxes, one inside the other. Thus he
is able to present a complex Of ideas simultaneously;
the reader sees how each idea is interrelated with the
others, even while also seeing the individuality Of each

element.

57

The last four stanzas consist largely Of an
exploration of the words included within the word because:
pg is a state Of existence which the ygp‘g‘i Of the poem
feel to be the whole meaning Of existence--meaning is
being; 93 is the French word meaning Egggf-the here and
now which are the most important things in life; pp is
the yg_discussed above; g'is a prefix meaning Epgp_or
gpp_g£; thus out Of you and 1, two separate people, is
created a wholly marvellous unity, a togetherness which
is more than two separate individuals, a symbolic It
which is called pg. This statement, reduced to twenty-
One characters on a page of poetry, is what cummings
means by the word INTENSITY. A thorough reading Of a
cummings poem requires a full commitment on the reader's
part; it requires an examination Of every character,
space, word and punctuation mark present. The poetry Of
e. e. cummings is £95 “difficult" but it ig Often intense.

Cummings' concept Of love is not sentimental,
nor is he advocating rejection Of rational thought in

favor of the emotions. In fact he is not advocating any-

 

thing; he merely demonstrates the possibility Of complete

 

integration, within his own persona, Of thought and
feeling. The persona in most cummings poems is able to
act as he feels because, for his healthy, integrated
personality, thought and feeling lead to the same posi-

tive action in terms Of what is helpful for others and

58

"good" for himself. Cummings leaves the advocating
function for Maslow, who asserts that "what healthy

peOple choose is . . . conducing to their and others'

 

self-actualization" (EEE, 169).

Maslow concludes from his Observations Of healthy
individuals that "our deepest needs are pgp, in them-
selves, dangerous Or evil or bad. This opens up the
prospect Of resolving the splits within the person between
Appollonian and Dionysian, classical and romantic, scien-
tific and poetic, between reason and impulse, work and
play, maturity and childlikeness, . . . masculine and
feminine, growth and regression" (EEE, 158). Cummings
did not argue his position in prose. He was a poet who
tried tO be aware Of and express his own feelings
authentically in poetic form. He apparently found that
his appreciation of reality was tremendously deepened
when he completely Opened himself to experience, circum-
venting the reductionary, limiting effects Of pure intel-
lectual categorizing.

Maslow has shown that the most healthy peOple
tend to desire things which are "good" for themselves
and others, that the things healthy people enjoy doing
satisfy their own needs and simultaneously are helpful
to other people. Such is the case with cummings' "love."
If everyone felt the reverence for experience and for

positive acts Of kindness cummings celebrates in his

59

poetry, if everyone loved everyone else in the way cum-
mings' poetry describes his love for Marion Morehouse
Cummings, then, as William Carlos Williams has stated,
we would have a moral revolution.

Thanks to Maslow and his fellow "third force
psychologists," we can now view cummings as the positive
poet Of growing, being and loving; a poet whose poetry
demonstrates what it means to be a "healthy, self-
actualizing person" in a world which desperately needs

to hear the sounds Of positive, human voices.

CHAPTER III--NOTES

1William Carlos Williams, "Lower Case Cummings,"
IE3 Harvard Wake, 5 (Spring 1946), 20. Hereafter referred
to in the text in parentheses as "Wake," followed by the
page number.

 

2Both Norman Friedman and Barry Marks discuss
cummings' love ethic as it pervades and forms the core
of his speaker's value-system. Both critics approach the
concept Of "love" from the Christian context and usage
Of the term. Both analyses work well when applied to

23 poem .

60

CHAPTER IV

CUMMINGS' ETHICAL SYSTEM:

INDIVIDUALITY

Individuality was a cornerstone Of cummings'
vision as well as a primary element in his aesthetic
theory and practice.

The content Of a cummings poem usually involves
the poet's personal interaction with Others, both animate
and inanimate. In a 1925 article cummings asserted,
"happy is the writer who, in the course Of his lifetime,
succeeds in making a dozen persons react to his person-
ality genuinely or vividly" (EE§5., 112). In the typical
cummings poem the persona seems to be the artist, expres-
sing the poet's values, personality, feelings, experiences
and perceptual processes.

Cummings may be considered to be a lyric poet in
the sense that his poetry is "characterized by or expres-
sive Of direct and usually intense personal emotion; for
the writer, lyric virtue usually depends upon the intensity

1

with which the personal vision is rendered." On the

book jacket Of his first play, Him (1927), cummings wrote

61

62

a short "Imaginary Dialogue Between An Author and A
Public," in which A Public asks An Author "what is HEB
About?" An Author responds with a question which implies
that everything an author writes is essentially about
himself: "Why ask me? Did I or didn't I make the play?“
A Public responds with the widely held assumption that
all artistic works represent some theory or represent
something outside the artist--something external, which
one can see in the world. Cummings answers "Beg pardon,
Mr. Public; I surely §§E§_what I'm knowing." The poetry
and paintings cummings "makes" are expressions Of his
attitudes, values, likes, dislikes and feelings about
life's mysteries.

Maslow considers the lyric impulse to be one Of
the essential elements of self-actualizing life processes.
Maslow says that persons who are consistently self-
actualizing "go about it in these ways: (1) they listen
to their own voices; (2) they take responsibility;

(3) they are honest; (4) and they work hard. (5) They
find out who they are and what they are, not only in
terms Of their mission in life, but also in terms Of
whether they do or do not like eggplant . . . or stay

up all night if they drink tOO much beer. All this is
what the real self means. They find their biological
natures, their congenital natures, which are irreversible

or difficult to change" (FRHN, 50). In his writing,

63

cummings seems to maintain self-actualizing attitudes
throughout his career. In his nonlectures cummings in-
sisted that the artist must look inside him/herself to
discover who s/he is and what s/he believes to be true:

no simple(if abstruse)system Of measurable soi-disant
facts, which anybody can think and believe and know--

or, when another system becomes popular; and the erstwhile
facts become fictions--can unthink and unbelieve and
unknow-- has power over a complex truth which he, and he

alone, can feel. . . . One thing . . . does always concern
this/individual: fidelity to himself.

(i6n, 82)

Maslow considers cummings' attitude a healthy one: "Most
Of us, most of the time, listen not to ourselves but to
Mommy's introjected voice or Daddy's voice or to the voice
Of the Establishment, Of the Elders, of authority, or Of
tradition." Instead, Maslow says that "a human being is,
at a minimum, his temperament, his biochemical balances,
and so on." Individuals should listen "to the impulse
voices" and "let the self emerge" (EEEE. 46). Cummings'
"individuality" seems tO fit Maslow's concept of the self-
actualizing person as one who honestly and responsibly
explores and discovers who s/he is and what s/he believes.
According to Maslow, self-actualizing persons
are able to perceive the growth-inhibiting elements in
their culture and tO expose those elements. (A culture
may be partly "growth-fostering" and partly "growth-
inhibiting.") “The sources of growth and of humanness

are essentially within the human person and are not

64

created or invented by the society, which can only help
or hinder the development Of humanness" (33E, 213).
Maslow theorizes that a "good" culture is one "which
gratifies all basic human needs and permits self-
actualization. The 'poorer' cultures do not." Indi-
vidual acts Of governments or groups within the culture
may also be judged by these criteria. Cummings' writings
often satirize specific aspects of the American culture
or the culture as a whole. In a letter to Elizabeth
Kaiser-Bream (26 November 1956) cummings explained the
feelings which prompted his politically satiric poems:

when "America" cheered wildly for Finland while

secretly selling hightest gasoline to Russia so

Its tanks could murder Finns,i ceased to be--in the

only true sense,that is spiritually--an "American."
Cummings satirized any cultural phenomenon which tended
to repress individuality. Quoting Saint-Exupery in a
letter written 26 November 1956, cummings says "there
are notafew Americans who feel as i do--& as Marion
does--but they(we)are, thanks to 'democracy',helpless
as far as 'action' goes. Comme disait Saint-Exupery:
when one person oppresses many peOple,everybOdy cries
'tyranny'! but tyranny occurs just as truly whenever
many people oppress one single individual . . . & nobody
even whispers" (Letters, 253-54).

Maslow sees such resistance as a healthy response

to unhealthy environments: "As soon as we speak of

65

"good" or "bad" cultures, and take them as pggpg rather
than as ends, the concept of 'adjustment' comes into
question. We must ask what kind of culture or subculture
is the 'well-adjusted' person 'well-adjusted pp?‘ Adjust-
ment is 292 necessarily synonymous with psychological
health" (SEE. 213). In 1944, with mankind busily destroy-
ing itself with atom bombs, the German V-l missile, and

napalm, cummings wrote in l x l:

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.

A world of made
is not a world of born--pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if--listen:there's a hell

of a good universe next door;let's go
The poem asks the reader NOT to pity "man-UN-kind," the
peOple who are victimizing other people and the rest of
the planet (mountains, trees, stones) as well. The poet
refuses to adjust to the "comfortable disease" of
"Progress" in which a very small animal (ManUNkind)

deifies itself into "hypermagical//u1traomnipotence."

66

Cummings' response is to remain un-adjusted and to write
many satirical poems.

In "why must itself up every of a park/anus stick
some quote statue unquote tO/prove that a hero equals any
jerk/who was afraid to answer 'no'?", cummings satirizes
the American glorification Of war and soldiers. A
soldier becomes a saint in America only if he kills
peOple in combat; it also helps if he dies in the
process.

A 1925 poem ridicules the super-patriot (poli-
tician?) who sits at home and mouths platitudes and
clichés about the glorious honor of dying for one's
country:

"next to Of course god america i

love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth Oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my

country 'tis of centuries come and go

and are no more what of it we should worry

in every language even deafanddumb

thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum

why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead

who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

(First published in Vanity Fair,
xxiv, 3 (May 1925), 44; 9E, 268)

 

The combination of dramatic monologue with a sonnet form
allows cummings to compound the ironies in the poem with-

out ever making a direct judgment about the speaker. A

67

sonnet traditionally celebrates love between human beings,
while the speaker of this sonnet celebrates love of
killing and death: ”what could be more beaut-/iful

than these heroic happy dead."

The sestet glorifies "america" in fragmented
slogans, as if a reporter were taking notes on the
speaker's monologue, or as if the speaker were getting
his clichés mixed. The incomplete, run-on statements
symbolize the meaningless nature of the speech. In line
seven the word "gorry" stands at the end Of a line for
added emphasis, calling attention to the fact that it
rhymes with the "gory" story of bloodshed being eulogized.
It is the first word in the poem to strike a sour note
in its eye rhyme with "worry"; the two words appear to
rhyme, but unlike the preceding end-rhymes (i=my, oh=go,
dumb=gum) "worry" and "gorry" in reality do pgp rhyme.
Cummings uses a technical eye-rhyme to convey the tone
of his poem; that what this speaker says may appear to
be patriotic, noble and good; but in reality this speech
is a facade of empty rhetoric.

"Mute," the last word the speaker utters, ironi-
cally is exactly what the speaker should be: silent.
However, as the final line reminds us, "He spoke" instead
of keeping his mouth closed. The final rhyme adds a

last note of irony. As the speaker stands on his podium

68

drinking his comfortable glass of "water," the soldiers
he has been eulogizing have become victims of "slaughter"
in a war far from home.

Every element of the poem has been carefully
arranged to maximize the irony of the dramatic monologue.
Cummings has used the traditional elements of the sonnet
form to heighten the effectiveness of his satire. It
was the type of politician attacked in that sonnet which
drew from cummings this epigrammatic definition:

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man

(1.1.1: 93.: 550)

Anyone who failed to be an individual with an identifiable
personality drew satirical fire from cummings.

By contrast, cummings defended Ezra Pound as an
individual who held a set of beliefs which were of his

own making, not borrowed from anyone:

so you think Ezra Pound needs rehabilitating?
Allow me to disagree. . . . if you're trying

to render the poet socially respectable,that's
an insult;because no poet worth his salt ever
has given or ever will give a hangnail for
social respectability. In this UNworld of
"ours",1ots of UNpoets and plenty of UNcoun-
tries(UNamerica,for example)need rehabilitating
the very worst way. But whoever or whatever he
may be,Ezra Pound most emphatically isn't
UNanyone or UNanything

(Letters, 255-56--18 August 1958)

69

In the materials which have so far come to light, cum-
mings has not made any derogatory statement about Pound's
political opinions. Cummings disagreed with Pound, for
he disliked the state's controlling the individua1--the
essence of Fascism. (His book EIMI condemns Russia for
the anti-individualism of Communist theory and practice.)
But cummings respected Pound's courage and individuality,
believing that each person had the moral imperative of
forming his or her own opinions with no regard for what-
ever might be considered "socially respectable."

In the cummings-Pound correspondence the blue-jay
appears as cummings' symbol for Pound. Both poets admired
the bird's courage and individuality. In ZE_poems cum-
mings immortalized these same qualities in a "kingbird"
(poem.#2):

for any ruffian of the sky

your kingbird doesn't give a damn--

his royal warcry is I AM

and he's the soul of chivalry

in terror of whose furious beak

(as sweetly singing creatures know)
cringes the hugest heartless hawk

and veers the vast most crafty crow
your kingbird doesn't give a damn

for murderers of high estate

whose mongrel creed is Might Makes Right
--his royal warcry is I AM

true to his mate his chicks his friends
he loves because he cannot fear

(you see it in the way he stands
and looks and leaps upon the air)

(g, 774)

70

Cummings here celebrates the kingbird's self-sufficiency,
the courage to stand firm against predatory creatures.
Self-sufficiency also accompanies many peak experiences.
The person during those moments feels
. . . himself, more than at other times, to be
the responsible, active, creating center of his
activities and of his perceptions. He feels more
like a prime mover, more self-determined (rather
than caused, determined, helpless, dependent,
passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be
his own boss, fully responsible, . . . with more
"free will" than at other times, master of his
fate. . . .
All this can be phrased in still another way

as the acme of uniqueness, individuality, or idio-
syncrasy.

(TPB, 107-08)

Maslow further states that the peak experience is
the basis for many satirical expressions, since in the
peak experience the individual feels "more decisive,
more single-minded, more strong, more apt to scorn or
overcome opposition, more grimly sure of himself, more
apt to give the impression that it would be useless to
try to stOp him" (32E. 107). There is a fine line between
brilliant satire and abusive insult; perhaps the judgment
depends upon the reader's individual views on the subject,
Object or person being attacked. Cummings' works of
satire seem to fit into the description of a man in the
midst of a peak experience, viewing the faults of his
society clearly, and writing poetry or prose which con-

veys those experiences to the reader.

71

Cummings' appreciation of individuality and
simultaneous attack on inhumane social norms appears in

his earliest published major work. In The Enormous Room,

 

cummings carries out an elaborate satire by reversing
the traditional connotations of cleanliness and filth.
Whereas we expect the "good" people to be clean and

proper, in The Enormous Room the clean characters are

 

reprehensible, while the dirty fellows are delightful.

The action begins in the ambulance service,
called "Section Sanitaire," or the Sanitapy Section.
Lieutenant A is a spic and span American chauvenist
who insists that cummings and Brown (a name with dirty
connotations) stay away from "those Dirty Frenchmen"
(pp. 9, 61). Our two heroes loved the Dirty Frenchmen
much more than the clean Americans, for the French knew
how to appreciate life, enjoy the sensual possibilities
and be more individualistic than the rigid American
military structure could tolerate.

Ironically, the punishment considered most
devastating by the American lieutenant was to assign
cummings and Brown to cleaning and greasing his personal
auto (p. 10). Brown and cummings were not allowed to
drive the ambulances "on the ground that our personal
appearance was a disgrace to the section" (p. 10). The
American Officer was concerned only with greasy uniforms,

while the ambulances were filled with blood and gore,

72

all around him people were suffering, and soldiers

were killing one another. Somehow the Officer thought
it was a privilege to go out in an ambulance and get
blown up while it was somehow a dishonor to remain alive.

The police who arrested our two unheroes and
trundled them around the country were also presented as
superficially clean and prOper but officially inhumane
nonpersons. Gendermes, police and prison guards are con-
stantly described as "pigs" who are "spic, not to say
span, gentlemen in suspiciously quite French uniforms"
(10), men who use "positively sanitary English" (111).
One Genderme is described as "neat as a pin, looking
positively sterilized" (47). The police are most
dehumanized when they are performing their duty, sym-
bolized in the novel by their caps or "tin derbies."

In donning their caps the police dehumanize themselves,
putting on "a positive ferocity of bearing" (49).

A third group Of nonpeople who are continually
described as "clean" includes administrators of all kinds.
Le Directeur, the arch villain in the prison, is described
as "immaculate, decently and neatly clothed," having
"pinkish, well-manicured flesh" and "soggily brutal
lips." In the administrative machinery Of the world
cummings finds a perfectly institutionalized ethic of
inhumanity and anti-individualism: "It takes a good and

great government perfectly to negate mercy" (184).

73

The final group of superficially clean but
inwardly corrupt nonpersons are those within the walls
of the prison itself who are "Trusties," or collaborators
with the prison guards and administration. The Fighting
Sheeney is one of these, a character who wears "immacu-
late clothes" including an "Immaculate velour hat," a
"specimen of humanity in whose presence one instantly
and instinctively feels a profound revulsion" (155).

The Fighting Sweeney is shown to be "almost as vain as
he was vicious" (163). His attitude is similar to Count
Bragard's snobbish attitude toward the other unfortunates
in the prison: both men feel superior to the others,
separate themselves from their fellow prisoners, and
hence deny the love or comraderie which allows all to
survive persecution. The Count tries to pretend the
filth and squalor of the environment doesn't exist: he
denies a major part Of reality. The Count says he's

a painter, but only of the beautiful--he sees no beauty
in the enormous room.

In contrast, when cummings paints his picture of
the enormous room (literally in prison on canvas, and
figuratively in his novel), he is careful to include the
slop bucket/toilet as an organic part of the picture.
Cummings attempts to perceive the world as it is, find
gOOd and bad where they are, appreciate every facet Of

human experience including the dirty and smelly, the

74

beautiful people and the ugly, the prisoners and the
administrator-guards alike.

The irony lies in the discrepancy between the
cleanliness freaks' moral filth (torturing people and
having anti-humanistic values), and the unkempt
prisoners' positive humanistic values (loving one
another and affirming the joy of life). When a social
system demands inhumane behavior of its members, cum-
mings' true individual will act in accordance with his
own values, rejecting society's dictates. Maslow has
made a similar observation about the healthy individuals
he studied. According to Maslow, individuals are alive,
independent and think for themselves. Individuals are
not afraid to react emotionally to life's happenings.

Individuals care about other people and are able to love

 

their fellow human beings. Individuals are artists in

 

that they express a distinct, unique personality in the
face of all pressures to conform.

Cummings' interest in individuals lasted through-
out his career, as Charles Norman tells us in his

biography:

Cummings was unlike most of the poets I have known--
he was interested in people. His poetry reflects
that interest, and The Enormous Room, of course, is
not so much autobiography as a celebration of indi-
viduals under that peculiarly twentieth century kind
of duress, the concentration camp. He went where
people congregated--to prize fights, burlesque, and
wrestling. . . .

(pig, 234)

75

Cummings also took daily walks to Washington Square Park
in New York City, a few blocks from his home. Here he
sketched (in both paint and words) people, trees and
animals--anything or anyone who demonstrated attributes
of individualism. One such descriptive poem is #30 from

his 1963 book, 11 poems:

one winter afternoon

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.

Nobody,it's safe
to say,observed him but

myself; and why?because

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)

most people fear most:
a mystery for which i've
no word except alive

--that is, completely alert
and miraculously whole;

with not merely a mind and a heart

but unquestionably a soul--
by no means funereally hilarious

but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious:

a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob,but a person)

and while never saying a word

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him

76

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international

measures that render hell rational
--i thank heaven somebody's crazy

enough to give me a daisy

The hero of this poem is celebrated as one who is "no
mob, but a person." This "alive" individual made con-
tact with another person in the midst of New York's
renowned impersonality, silently giving the speaker

"a daisy," an actual and symbolic example of natural
beauty.

The "bespangled clown/standing on eighth street"
who handed cummings a flower is compared to a bird in the
last nine lines: "and while never saying a word//who
was anything but dumb;/since the silence of him//self
sang like a bird." A bird is often used in cummings'
poetry as a symbol of the individual who is nobody but
him/herself. In ZE.png§'a rooster's monologue opens the
book, followed immediately by the "kingbird" poem dis-
cussed elsewhere.

A third poem in 13_pggg§ celebrating the indi-
viduality of a hummingbird, humans in general, and cum-

mings in particular, is number 54:

77

i

never

guessed any

thing(even a

universe)might be

so not quite believab

1y smallest as perfect this
(almost invisible where of a there Of a)here Of a
rubythroat's home with its still
ness which really's herself

(and to think that she's

warming three worlds)

who's amazingly

Eye

Individuality is signified by the E'Of the opening line,
the Eye of the closing line, and the l opening the
seventh line. The longest line of the poem, visually
representative of the hummingbird's bill is the letter 3,
also representative of a particular individual. In cele-
brating the particular hummingbird cummings implicitly

celebrates every creature which is really herself and

 

therefore perfect.

The hummingbird poem celebrates a specific mother
bird, her three offspring, and their perfect nest; and
the poem simultaneously celebrates the individual's
ability to perceive such natural wonders and to feel
wonder and love for nature's miracles. Cummings feels
a part of natural marvels, as indicated by his opening
and closing rhyme i/Eyg. His "yes" attitude allows him
to appreciate the individuality of others while assert-

ing his own uniqueness simultaneously.

78

In his nonlectures he explains that the elements
of his ethic which I have isolated here and in preceding
chapters are integrated. After quoting a portion of the

play Him, cummings says that "this fragment of dialogue

renders a whole bevy of abstractions among which i recog-
nize immediately three mysteries: love, art, and self-
transcendence or growing . . ." (ESE! 81). The individual
or artist "tells us something far beyond either fact or
fiction; a strictly unmitigated personal truth: namely,
how he feels." Further, cummings says that an artist
feels "absolutely and totally alone" as a "solitary
individual" who remains "separated from everybody else
by . . . his individuality, . . . without which he would
cease to exist at all."

Here cummings begins to show the way the elements
Of his ethical system are interrelated: "yet(and here
is perhaps the essence of the mystery)this incarnation
of isolation is also a lover." The individual loves
another individual "so deeply" that "if selftranscendence
actually occurs," the poet will feel himself one with
the beloved. The term "beloved" is also a symbolic term,
representing the Other, whether that other individual be
a "bespangled clown," a hummingbird or "love herself."
Later in the nonlectures cummings completes his expla-
nation Of the way "love" and "art" are transcendental

processes: "we should go hugely astray in assuming that

79

art was the only selftranscendence. Art is a mystery;
all mysteries have their source in a mystery-Of-mysteries
who is love: and if lOvers may reach eternity directly

through love herself, their mystery remains essentially

that of the loving artist whose way must lie through his
art, and of the loving worshipper whose aim is oneness
with his god" (iéfl' 82). Feeling, being aware of self
and others, caring about others and loving other indi-
viduals are the subjects of cummings' art. His celebra-
tion of the loving process in his works of art creates
in him a renewing awareness which is self-transcendence.
A final poem may demonstrate that cummings' poems
are records of his efforts to keep his individuality open
to the uniqueness of other individuals, a growth process
which involves a momentary death of the Old self in a
renewing contact with others. Each new contact with
another is then integrated into the elements of the poet's
former self to create a new individuality. Cummings is
constantly growing, constantly participating in a cycle
of self-transcendence and self-creation. Poem #68 in
fig pgggg demonstrates this process, focusing on the
poet's perceptual processes in action as he sees a
child's eyes briefly light up (like shooting stars) in
pleasure over some unspecified experience before they

disappear from view:

80

the(oo)is

lOOk
(aliv
e)e
yes

are(chI1d)and

wh(g
o
ne)
0

w(A)a(M)s

In a 1960 letter to an unidentified correspondent

cummings explicated the process celebrated in this poem:

what at first impresses me as

merely a pair of wideopen eyes
"the(oo)is"

becomes an intense stare
I! look II

of alive eyes-which-say-yes
"(aliv/e)e/yes"

belonging to a child who is(reminds me Of) myself
"are(chIld)and"

who's gone
"wh(g/O/ne)o"

leaving me with a memory of his eyes
"O...o"

& by becoming was instead of is

(i.e. disappearing) at the same time

becoming-intensely (the am of) myself
"w(A)a(M)s"

(Letters, 268)

Cummings gives us the initial impression of the child's
eyes before any real contact has been made between poet
and child"(oo)"; then the intense stare "00" which says

"yes" to risking contact with another individual. The

81

integration of self with other is facilitated by cum-
mings' memory, comparing the child with himself at an
earlier age. In the final lines the eyes of the child
have become "intensely (the am of) myself": "w(A)a(M)s."

The poet has made contact with the child, has left his

own individuality to feel or empathize with another being
and has integrated the feeling of that other being into
his own (growing) personality.

Mysteries such as these are better presented in
poems, so the rest of this dissertation will be concerned
with analyzing the many ways cummings expressed his ethi-
cal system in poetry whose forms grew out of the ideas he

wished to express.

CHAPTER IV- -NOTES

1J. W. Johnson, "Lyric," The Encyclopedia pg
Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger (Princeton:
Princeton UnIVersity Press, 1971), p. 468.

 

 

82

CHAPTER V

CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND

PRACTICE: INTENSITY

Intensity was the second cornerstone in cummings'
vision as well as being a primary element in his aesthetic
theory throughout his career. In his 2E3; review of
T. S. Eliot's Eggp§_(June 1920), cummings stressed that
"every poem impresses us with an overwhelming sense Of
technique."1 He expanded on this comment in a 1925
review, using the circus as a metaphor for his idea Of
what Art should be. At the circus, the spectator/reader
is continually amazed by the "unbelievably skilful and
inexorably beautiful and unimaginably dangerous things"
which are "continually happening" in the circus/poem.
There should always be such an intense experience happen-
ing in the tent or on the poetic stage that the spectator/
reader "feels that there is a little too much going on at
any given moment."

"Intensity" for cummings includes many critical
elements, one of which is "compression." Cummings

selected every word in each writing with care, attempting

83

84

to place exactly the right word in exactly the right
place on the page. Cummings' Object was to capture the
essence of each experience he recorded with the fewest
possible words.2 His period of greatest compression
came in the 1915-25 period of his writing.

The Enormous Room was rewritten from notebooks

 

and journals he kept while in the World War I French
prison camp which is the setting Of the novel. A com-
parison of materials from his notebooks with correspond-
ing sections from the novel reveals the rigorous selection
of detail so much a part of cummings' methodology. The
notebook version is so compressed that it is almost
incomprehensible for the reader:

In one of my numerous notebooks I have this

perfectly direct paragraph:

Card table: 4 stares play banque with 2
cigarettes (ldead) & A pipe the clashing faces
yanked by a leanness of one candle bottle-stuck

(Birth of X) where sits the Clever Man who
pyramids, sings (mornings) "Meet Me . . ."

(£13, 110)

The notebook version is a form of shorthand. Key images
have been recorded so that the scene may be recalled in
detail. The passage is an example of Ezra Pound's Imagist
principle of "direct presentation of the thing, whether
subjective or objective" using the fewest possible number
of words. To the general reader, however, the notebook

entry may seem cryptic, for extreme compression treads

85

the fine line between communication and incomprehensi-
bility. Sometimes leaving out transitions and apparently
unnecessary connectives interferes with the reader's
ability to "translate” the compressed statement into a
logical or even an intuitive understanding of the author's
intended meaning. But the passage communicates more than
the scribbles in a secretary's notebook communicate to
one unversed in the symbols of shorthand.3 The notebook
version uses images to carry the impression of the scene
just as a pencil sketch carries the essential outline

of a scene which may appear later in a finished Oil
canvas.

In the published novel cummings adds color and ,
shadow to his sketch, but still uses only the words
absolutely necessary to his presentation. He interprets
this particular notebook passage for us in the novel:

. . . which Specimen of telegraphic technique, being
interpreted, means: Judas, Garibaldi, and The Hol-
land Skipper (whom the reader will meet de suite)--
Garibaldi's cigarette having gone out, sO—greatIy
is he absorbed--play ban ue with four intent and
highly focussed individuaIs who may or may not be
The Schoolmaster, Monsieur Auguste, The Barber, and
Meme (myself); The Clever Man (as nearly always)
acting as banker. The candle by whose somewhat
uncorpulent illumination the various physiognomies
are yanked into a ferocious unity is stuck into the
mouth Of a bottle. The whole, the rhythmic dispo-
sition of the figures, construct a sensuous inte—
gration suggestive of The Birth of Christ by one of
the Old Masters. The Clever Man, having had his
usual morning warble, is extremely quiet. He will
win, he pyramids--(speculative technique in which
one continually bets all he has previously won on
the next bet, hoping to win ever-increasing quanti-
ties of $)--and he pyramids because he has the cash

86

and can afford to make every play a big one. All
he needs is the rake of a crou ier to complete his
disinterested and wholly nerveIess poise. He is

a born gambler, is the clever man. . . .

(23. 110)

Even his interpretation, however, is an example of
extraordinary compression. For example, he uses the
single word "pyramids" to represent a whole gambling
philosophy. After explaining parenthetically the pro-
cess of "pyramiding," he uses only the single word to
convey the idea. Visually, cummings also used type-
writer symbols like "$“ to represent words and concepts.

Cummings considered his inmate-companions as
persecuted by paranoid elements of wartime French society
in much the same way as the early Christians were perse-
cuted by the Romans. An analogy between this card game
and the biblical manger scene is suggested by this brief
comment: "suggestive of the Birth of Christ by one of
the Old Masters." The sketch captures the essence Of the
scene in economical language suggesting a situation, par-
ticipants, a mood and the poet's perceptions Of and
reactions to it.

The scene is so distilled that it borders on
caricature. Each participant is referred to by a name
which denotes his or her primary characteristic. Auguste
‘was the barber Of the prison community, and is referred

to as "The Barber." "Judas" was one of the inmates who

87

was constantly spying on and betraying his comrades.

The book includes an immense number of characters; many
important personalities are captured in thumbnail
sketches. Cummings' vivid sketches capture the essential
or most memorable characteristics of the person, and
help the reader to keep track Of the many characters as

they move about The Enormous Room.

 

Cummings compared his use of caricature in fiction
to the selection of details and elimination Of all unneces-
sary words in poetry-writing. In his 1920 review of
T. S. Eliot's Eggpg. cummings wrote that the style of
the extremely great artist "secures its emphasis by
always hesitating on the edge of caricature at the right
moment." Eliot's poetry was praised in terms which
explain cummings' own use Of near-caricature: "this
intense and serious and indubitably great poetry . . .
like some great painting and sculpture, attains its
effects by something not unlike caricature."4 Cummdngs
is here referring to a selection of details so economical
that the scene is painted as Ezra Pound's Imagist credo
asserts poetry should portray a scene: concretely, with
only the most important details present, with every word
contributing directly to the presentation and with all
excess words cut away. One development in cummings'
poetic technique was from an early compression so

severe as to make the poem nearly unintelligible to

88

a later readable compromise between intensity of com-

pression and reader-accessibility.

By comparing early and late versions of a single

poem, we can see the development toward greater reader

accessibility vividly demonstrated. "Listen" was first

published in The Little Review in 1923. It was carefully

 

revised by cummings forty years later for inclusion in

his last complete manuscript, ZE_poem . In its final

1963 version, the poem represents the mature craftsman's

style, vision and aesthetic theory. By comparing the two

versions of "Listen" we can see some of the most signifi-

cant developments in cummings' artistic expertise and in

his attitudes toward his reader-audience.5

10

13
14
15

17

19

20
21
22

As printed in 1923 the poem reads as follows:

listen
this a dog barks and
this crowd of peOple and are these steeples
glitter 0 why eyes houses the smiles
cries gestures buttered with sunlight
O, listen
leaves in are move push leaves green are crisply writhe
a new spikes of the by river chuckles see clean why
mirrors cries people bark gestures
come 0 you if come who with listen run
me with I quick
Listen
irrevocably
(something arrives
noiselessly in things lives trees
at its own pace, certainly silently)
comes

yes
you cannot hurry it with a thousand poems

you cannot stOp it with all the policemen in the world

89

Cummings is telling us that he can sense something-—a

 

positive life-affirming ygg attitude or response--arriv-
ing in himself and insists that the reader join him in
running through the streets appreciating the beauty
accessible to an Open mind and heart: "come 0 you if
come who with listen run/me with I quick/Listen." Trans-
lated into more normal syntax, this statement might read:
"if you (reader) will only come with me and listen, if
you will run beside me quickly down the street, then you
too will be able to perceive the excitement of simply
being alive." But you must Listen. Only if you seek out
this experience Of delight in living will you be able
to "hear" or otherwise sense the arrival Of "something":
(something arrives
noiselessly in things lives trees
at its own pace, certainly silently

come S

yes

Cummings often tried to recreate perceptual
experiences in his poems. As he matured he became more
effective in presenting his experience faithfully, yet
allowing the reader to follow his line of presentation.
In this 1923 poem the syntax is so fragmented, the jux-
taposition of words is so unusual, the deletion of
transitions is so complete, that only careful study
and.dissection supply us with a comprehensible reading

of the poem.

90

He has carried the theory of compression-—using
only the most significant words--to an extreme. The
result is nearly unreadable. Part of his message is that
such vivid perceptions as the one pictured here are ppp
available to the logical, classifying, mental faculties
which are tied to linear reasoning processes. Instead,
cummings wants us to break down our tendency to classify
and categorize; he wants us to let the images and sounds
flood into us in whatever nonorder they happen to strike
us. Cummings is trying to expand our awareness of the
elements available to the open senses of an aware person
on any sunny day. But the method he has used is akin to
presenting a boring scene through boring, monotonous lan-
guage: the reader may be alienated from the poem in the
process of trying to read it. Careful analysis can help
us appreciate the poem's accurate depiction of an
emotional state.

Cummings places EEiE at the beginning Of the
second line to call attention to the vibrant immediacy
of the sound of pEi§_particular dog barking right now.
Repetition Of 2213 as the Opening word in line three
further emphasizes the specific and unique quality of
the experience being considered.

In lines 3-5 and 7-9 the poet attempts to demon-
strate the complexity of sensual impressions which strike

him in this moment of time during which he listens:

91

this crowd of people and are these steeples

glitter 0 why eyes houses the smiles

cries gestures buttered with sunlight

leaves in are move push green are crisply writhe

a new spikes of the by river chuckles see clean why
mirrors cries people bark gestures

OQU'IUJ

The poet, totally alive and open to every facet of exper-
ience, describes in a shotgun blast of words the impres-
sions he is receiving as he "listens." Smiles, cries,

gestures Of people are juxtaposed in the speaker's mind

 

with houses, church steeples and growing things. All
aspects of life crowd in at the poet's senses in chaotic

profusion: objects (river, mirrors, houses, steeples);

 

 

animals (dogs); people; other growing things (leaves,
spikes of new grass, green): actions and motions (move,

push, writhe, smiles, gestures, mirrors, buttered, see):

 

 

 

 

visual phenomena (glitters, gestures, sunlight, green,

 

see, mirror); and sounds (cries, chuckles, bark). All

 

 

Of these images are mixed with the poet's spontaneous
reactions (listen, 0, why, 0, Listen, see, why, come, 0,
listen, run) in an ecstatic moment of total involvement
with experience. The juxtaposition of images with all
transitions eliminated in these six lines recreates on
paper the spontaneous, disorganized nature of the impres-
sions which cummings receives when he Opens himself com-
pletely and unthinkingly to every sensation he can per-

ceive.

92

The syntax takes on a normal speaking pattern
in the last nine lines of the poem as cummings explains
how he derived a sense of unity out of all the preceding
sensual chaos:

13 irrevocably
(something arrives
noiselessly in things lives trees
at its own pace, certainly silently)
comes
18
19 yes
you cannot hurry it with a thousand poems

22 you cannot stOp it with all the policemen in the world

Unity comes from the attitude called ygg. which remains
a constant, unifying element throughout cummings' poetry.
In the external world, the equivalent of yg§_is the
season of spring; in cummings' internal world of feeling,
ygg is an attitude of sensitive attentiveness to all
stimuli. The poet insists that we uninitiated readers
listen while the poem's speaker describes what may be
perceived if we adopt a positive life-affirming response
to the potentially exciting world around and inside our-
selves. The early poem is only partially narrative,

more an act being staged visually for the reader. When
read aloud, the extreme compression of language creates
unintelligibility.‘ Only when the early poem is read
slowly, carefully and treated as an exercise in medi-

tation do the juxtaposed images become meaningful. The

93

connotations and denotations of each word must be
digested slowly before the meaning becomes clear.

In the later poem, however, the reader is able
to plunge through the verbal experience with cummings.
The later version of "(listen)" reveals its increasingly
deeper significance with each reading, but there is no
longer the sensation of disorientation which must be
encountered before we can see even the most literal
meaning. The persona of the later poem is less hostile,
less arrogant, less stubborn. He is asking for the

reader's participation rather than demanding the reader's

 

total commitment g priori:

(listen)

this a dog barks and
how crazily houses
eyes people smiles
faces streets
steeples and eagerly

tumbl

ing through wonder
ful sunlight
--1ook--

selves, stir:writhe
o-p-e-n-i-n-g

are(leaves;flowers)dreams

,come quickly come
run run

with me now

jump shout(1augh
dance cry

sing)for it's Spring

94

--irrevocab1y;

and in

earth sky trees

:every

where a miracle arrives

(yes)

you and i may not

hurry it with

a thousand poems

my darling

but nobody will stOp it

With All The Policemen In The World

The syntax is relatively conventional, with the only
inversions arranged for emphasis and sound pattern:
(listen) emphasizes the "now"ness and "here"ness of the
dog's bark; the abrupt insertion of crazily lends a wild,
happily crazy quality to the house/eyes people smiles/

faces streets as well as to their eagerly/tumbl/ing.

 

 

The punctuation serves as vocal choreography.
The experience of "Spring" is much more complete

in this poem than it is in the early ip Just-/Spring,

 

due primarily to the strong use Of parentheses in cum-
mings' later work. Here the parenthetical insertions
serve a triple purpose. First, they work as stage
directions to the reader/actor/participant in the poem's

experience (listen), (laugh/ dance cry/sing), (yes).

 

 

Second, parentheses reveal the "aliveness" of natural

things: listen . . . leaves;flowers . . . laugh/dance

 

 

gpy sing . . . yes--if we listen we can hear natural

things singing "yes," an affirmation of life. Third,

95

the Eglp_experience of nature's aliveness as something
outside (or rather inside) the realm Of the five senses
is symbolized by placing the concrete sensually-exper-
ienced description of Spring outside the parentheses
while sowing the felt sense Of deep affirmation Of life's
"yes"ness throughout the poem inside the parentheses.

The first parenthetical insertion is the opening
line of the poem, stressing the importance of this nor-
mally "modifying" insertion. Parenthetical insertions
are normally phrases; the importance of this thought is~
stressed by its clause construction ("flowers . . . sing").
Beginning as a separate thought, set Off from the main
series of stanzas as a refrain, the parenthetical part
of the poem suddenly inserts itself into the midst Of
the description in the thirteenth line: gfpfgf_f;f_fg/

are(leaves;flowers)dreams. The Opening of dreams is the

 

conceptual, descriptive level of action; in the midst of
this is juxtaposed the "happening" of leaves and flowers
opening, laughing, dancing, crying and singing yg_. Two
different kinds of experience are being juxtaposed: we
participate fully in the immediate happening of the
parenthetical flowers and leaves dancing, etc.; and we
are simultaneously shown by the narrator at our elbow how
the dog is barking, how our perceptions seem to be

tumbl/ing, how selves are stirring and writhing and

 

opening to the presence, reality, beauty, arrival of

96

the miracle of Being: (Spring), and how the experience
may not be hurried or stopped by anything outside our-
selves. Thus, while the narrator is reading us his poem
about the arrival of spring, Spring or Openness or Being
is arriving inside himself (in parentheses) and hopefully
in us as well.

Parentheses often function in this way in ZE_pggp§
and throughout cummings' later work: they attempt to
juxtapose a demonstration of the actual experience or
feeling, a description of the external stimulus which
provoked it and the physical manifestations of the
experience which are available to the five senses. In
the best of these poems, the two aspects of the exper-
ience fully complement and supplement one another, as in
(listen). The words in parentheses function equally well
as part Of the visual experience of the poem as it stands
on paper and as part of the parenthetical expression in
isolation. By contrast, the 1923 version of "listen"
uses parenthetical statement only to further define or

limit the word yes: irrevocably . . . comes a thing

 

called yes, where yes equals something which arrives

 

noiselessly in things, in people's lives, and in trees,

 

coming g5 its own pace, and certainly arriving silently.

 

 

Both statements are from the same point of view, both

are explaining a phenomenon which the poet alone is

97

experiencing. The later version of "(listen)“ is
remarkably superior in its use of parenthetical technique.
Punctuation in the early version of "listen" is
almost nonexistent. The only period appears in line 12,
which would seem to indicate that the poet wishes us to
consider the first twelve lines and the final ten (includ-
ing line-spaces) as two separate meaning-units. Capi-
talization and spacing are alternate forms of punctuation
utilized in this poem, but the first line-space stanzaic
break does not come until the eighteenth line, leaving
only line-breaks and four capital letters to guide us.
Of the four capitalized words in the poem, three Of them
are repetitions of "O." "O" is cummings' letter-symbol
for a state of wonder and pleasant surprise. The letter
is visually representative of an Open-mouthed state Of
awe, as well as the shape of the sun ("buttered in sun-
light"), or the shape of the moon. "Listen" is the only
other capitalized word in the poem, leading immediately
to the logical conclusion that the state of awe ("O")
and the state Of intense awareness ("Listen") are
synonymous states of being; both states of awareness
are included in the positive "yes" attitude whose
arrival is announced in line 19.
Because cummings chooses each word with care, a

repeated word acquires added import with each recurrence.

98

The key words "Listen," "0," "you" and 233 each occur
three times in the poem.

A major developmental change in cummings' style
is in his attitude toward the reader, as illustrated by
these two versions of "Listen." His early work implies
an adversary relationship between poet and audience.

In his first four books of poems cummings deliberately
ignored (or violated) the traditional reader expectations
about the way poems should be written, choosing instead
to invent individualistic modes of poetic expression.

In his 1952 "nonlecture two" he was still asserting that
"so far as i am concerned, poetry and every other art

is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question
Of individuality" (E25, 24). The Object of his earliest
poems was to express the ideas and feelings of nobody-
but-himself in a style specifically designed to express
his insights. He seems to have cared little about reader
response to his unusual techniques.

In The Magic-Maker, Charles Norman reports a

 

conversation in which cummings discussed his early atti-
tude toward his readers: "The relation of an artist to
his audience is neither positive nor negative. It's at
right angles. I'm not writing 'difficult' so that simple
people won't understand me. I'm not writing 'difficult'

for difficult people to understand. Insofar as I have

99

any conception of my audience, it inhibits me. An
audience directs things its own way" (EE, 134).

The 1923 version of "Listen" demonstrates the
young poet's commitment to sincere self-expression in
his poetry. It is a poem which attempts to record in
visual form the very essence of his experiences--with
little regard for any reader's ability to enter easily
into that experience through conventional reading tech-
niques. The poem chastises its reader to (imperatively)
"listen" to the perceptual processes Of the poet who
demonstrates the way it feels to be truly open to exper-

ience. The poet is telling us that he can sense something,

 

or a positive, life-affirming yes attitude or response,
in the everyday world of things buttered ip sunlight.
He insists that we listen as he describes his personal

experience of something which arrives silently, in the

 

things, the lives, the trees around him. The fact that

"something" arrives/noiselessly tells us that, paradoxi-

 

cally, to simply listen (repeated four times throughout
the first section of the poem) with our ears will not
be a sufficient level of awareness to perceive the

arrival of the something. We must "listen" in some

 

deeper sense if we are to hear.
The reader receives the impression that this
special listening process is something unique to the

poet--that only cummings can really hear or feel the

100

excitement and wonder-~signified by Q, listen in line 6.

For you, dear reader, cannot hurry ip_with a thousand

 

 

poems, nor can you, the reader, stop i£_with all the

policemen ip_the world. The reader is assumed to be

 

 

antagonistic to the state of wonder and excitement
related by the poet in the early lines of the poem.
This is one of the most important differences between
the two versions.6

In the final version, as it appears in ZE_pggp§,
the reader is assumed to be a willing sharer in the per-
ception of wonder: the poet excitedly asks the reader

to (Listen), look, come quickly come / run run /with pg

 

22!: It is no longer the poet alone against the world
(and against the reader). Now it is the poet and reader
together: ypp_§pg_i may not /hurry ip_pipp_§_thousand
ppgpp, and we share the secret that nobody will stop ip/

With All The Policemen £2 The World. Cummings' perception

 

 

Of the something in the early "listen" has changed to a

 

feeling of Spring arriving irrevocably. §_miracle arrives
in the external Objects: earth sky trees / every /where.

In the early "listen" the something also arrives in men's

 

lives only 35 its own pace. There is pp way to hurry it

 

if you, the reader, don't already possess this sense of
wonder even if you want to have it happen to you: YOU

.QQNNOT hurry ip_with 3 thousand poems (emphasis mine).

 

JBut in the 1963 version we find that the miracle MIGHT

101

(may) take place in us if we "run run /come with me now
/jump shout (laugh /dance cry /sing) for it's Spring,"
and "you and i_may not /hurry it with /a thousand poems

/my darling /but nobody will stop it /With All The

 

Policemen In The World." There is a possibility that
participating in the poetic experience pgy_bring ygp_§pg
i,to participation in the miracle a little sooner than
it might otherwise occur in us.

This positive attitude toward his reader first
appeared explicitly in the introduction to his 1938

edition of Collected Poems: "The poems to come are for

 

you and for me and are not for mostpeople--it's no use
trying to pretend that mostpeOple and ourselves are
alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves
than the squarerootofminusone. you and i are human
beings; Mostpeople are snobs."7 Here the poet includes
the reader, a solitary person who is sharing cumming's

poetry, as one Of the human beings. Every one who is

 

not true to himself, but lives by the ethics and plati-
tudes voiced by others may be considered to be mostpeople.
Then follows a page and a half of satirical prose blast-

ing the deadly philosophy of mostpeople as contrasted

 

with the alive, growing, yes outlook of e. e. cummings.

 

By 1952, when cummings included a revised version

<>f this introduction in his fourth nonlecture, he was

 

even less overtly hostile toward mostpeople. In the

 

102

nonlecture he eliminated the first paragraph (quoted

 

above) along with almost all of the other satirical,
antagonistic passages. He used only sixteen lines of
the introduction, and these were only the positive parts
which described his own outlook. However, cummings did
not change his negative opinion Of people who were insin-
cere or who failed to examine their world critically and
assert their right (duty) to be unique, feeling indi-
viduals. But he did change the way the poet-speaker
addressed the reader in many of his poems and in his
introduction to books of poems.

'In the 1963 version of "(listen),“ the effect
of the speaker's changed attitude toward his listeners
is to encourage our participation in cummings' sense of
wonder; whereas in the 1923 version we feel as though
we are being castigated for pgp participating--before
we are given a chance to join in the poet's outlook.
we are assumed to be guilty in the early poem; not until
the later poetry does he more Often assume we are inno-
cent until proven guilty.8

Cummings also changed a few of the images in
the later version of "(listen)." "This crowd of
people" in the early version becomes simply people in
the 1963 poem, "and are these steeples" becomes simply
steeples; "glitter/O why . . . buttered in sunlight,"

is simplified into "are eagerly/ tumbl/ ing through

103

wonder/ ful sunlight," the syntax and diction of a
simple childlike singing voice. The four occurrences

of listen are reduced to the single opening "(listen)"

in the later poem and other verbal requests are added

to involve all the reader's senses in the miracle: E295,

selves,stir:writhe/ opening, dreams, come, run, jump,

 

 

 

shout, laugh, dance, cry, sing. The scene we are wit-

 

 

 

nessing also involves more sensations, more aspects of

growth than the Older poem gave us: crazily, eagerly

 

tumbl/ ing, wonder, wonderful, and full sunlight,

 

 

 

selves,stir:writhe, opening, dreams and Spring are

 

 

either absent from the earlier poem or are buried in
the fragmented syntax which is more pervasive in his
earlier poems.

The early poem characterizes the something as

 

silent, noiseless; the only sound images in the poem are
those of the dog barking, the gpigg and the river
chuckling. The later version of the poem is alive with
sound images. The dog still barks, but now poet and
reader are loudly rejoicing at the arrival of the

miracle: both shout, laugh, cry and sing.

 

Both poems celebrate an intense commitment to
the appreciation of all external and internal life-
experiences. Thus "intensity" is for cummings not

only a way of writing, but also a way of perceiving.

104

His poems recreate in compressed language the experience
of living intensely, of living each moment to the fullest.
Several letters have been published in which

cummings explains a particular poem for a puzzled reader.
A survey of these letters indicates that he appar-
ently began explaining poems to readers around 1949.
However, in that first known explication cummings' tone
is the somewhat haughty tone of a master craftsman to
a bumbling apprentice. He is discussing one of the
poempictures in his 1950 book XAIPE:

chas sing does(who

,ins

tead,

smiles alw

ays a trifl

e

w

hile ironin

!
nob odyknowswhos esh

?i

rt)n't
Cummings tells his unknown correspondent that "chas
sing" is the name Of a Chinese laundryman on Minetta

Lane (maybe Street). This poem tells you that, in spite

of his name, he doesn't sing(instead,he smiles always 3

 

trifle while ironing nobody knows whose shirt." So
far his explication is very straightforward and helpful,
written in a discursive tone of voice. Here the tone

changes, however: "I can't believe you've never done

105

any ironing;but,if you have,how on earth can you possibly
fail to enjoy the very distinct pictures of that remark-
able process given you by the poet's manipulating of
those words which occur in the poem's parenthesis?!"
His concluding line sounds as though the master was having
a difficult time trying to communicate with another one
of those "mostpeople": "ah well;as Gilbert remarked to
Sullivan, when anybody's somebody everyone will be
nobody". ,Still, he did explain the poem to a reader
who was not included among those he thought of as his
friends, so he was indeed moving toward more Of a dia-
logue with his audience than was the case in 1923.

By 1959 the tone of these explanatory letters
was much more friendly and their frequency of occurrence
had increased significantly. In a letter written 03

February [1959?] he discussed poem 19 from 22 poems:

 

un(bee)mo
vi

n(in)g
are(th
e)you(o
nly)

asl(rose)eep

Cummings tells his correspondent that "all" the poem
"wants to do is to create a picture of a bee,unmoving,in
the last blossom of a rosebush. Taken alone,the paren-

theses read 'bee in the only rose'. Without parentheses,

106

the poem asks 'unmoving are you asleep'. Put these
elements together & they make 'bee in the only rose
(unmoving)are you asleep?'" Again he has given an
explanation of a poem in a discursive tone of voice.
However, his explanation is more complex in this case,
perhaps demonstrating that his understanding of the use
of parentheses in his poems has become more complex in
his later poetry, and perhaps also demonstrating that he
is now more willing to explain his poems in more depth.

The last paragraph of cummings' letter demon-
strates the change in attitude toward his audience which
had taken place by 1959 (if Stade and Dupee have dated
the letter correctly). Cummings exhibits an attitude
toward his reader which is friendly and open: "if you'll
let me know which of the other poems seem least compre-
hensible,I'11 gladly furnish explanations;which are cer-
tainly harmless,as long as a person doesn't mistake the
explanation for the poem".

This statement assumes his reader to be a friendly
participant in the poetic process and parallels the atti-
tude revealed in his 1962 version of "(listen)." The
correspondent to whom the letter is addressed is Mrs.
Frances Ames Randall. Since there are no other letters

addressed to her in the Selected Letters, and since she

 

is never mentioned in the biography nor in the other

selected letters, it would appear that Mrs. Randall was

107

not an especially close friend of cummings, which is

the only other explanation for such a warm reply.
Furthermore, the number of explanatory letters increases
sharply after 1950 and they grow increasingly more
friendly and helpful through these later years. These
data would tend to support my observation that cummings'
attitude toward his audience changed significantly in
his later years.

Many Of the later poems are more accessible to
"mostpeople," but the basic aims Of writing poems never
changes throughout his long career: to make "a dozen
persons react to his personality genuinely or vividly"
and to substitute in his readers a fully aware, vital
experience for their normally un-intense impressions of

reality.

CHAPTER V--NOTES

1e. e. cummings, "T. S. Eliot," The Dial (June
1920), rpt. in George J. Firmage, ed., ATMIscellany
Revised (New York: October House, 1965Y, pp. 25-29.
AIl articles quoted hereafter which may be found in A
Miscellany Revised will be noted in the text as indiEated,
yip. (Misc., --) with page reference in parentheses.

 

 

2Norman Friedman has demonstrated cummings'
craftsmanship in Chapter Five of his second critical book
on cummings, ESE: EEE.Art 9: His Poetry. In that chapter
Friedman reconstructs 175—pages of revisions which cum-
mings made to poem #90 in 95 poems, "rosetree,rosetree."

 

Friedman concludes from hi ana ysis of cummings' revision
process that: ”cummings is . . . a poetic maker. This
claim is based on an assumption that a man, to write
great poems, needs, in addition to a great moral vision
and a flair for language, certain constructive and criti-
cal powers pertaining tO the organization of a poem--to
the adjustment of its various parts and devices to the
whole for the sake of achieving a unified effect" (126).
Friedman shows that "the whole poem was rewritten dozens
and dozens of times in its entirety so as to incorporate
at each step in the process the new with the old, the
altered with the unchanged; it moved forward as a grow-
ing and developing unity from stage to stage, adding,
changing, rearranging, drOpping, and adding bit by bit
the elements of the finished design, and "without break-
ing anything" (158).

3Robert E. Maurer has also found this to be true.
In his article "Latter-Day Notes on E. E. Cummings'
Language," Bucknell Review, 5 (May 1955), 1-23, rpt. in
Norman Friedman, ed., Twentieth Century Views Series
e. e. cummin s (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
I972), p. 8I, he said: "At its most highly developed
state, in his later books, Cummings' language becomes
almost a foreign one, usually possible to figure out for
a reader who knows English . . .; but he will get its full
meaning only if he has read a great deal of cummings and
if he 'knows the language'."

108

109

4"T. S. Eliot," Misc., 26.

5e. e. cummings, "Three Poems," The Little Review,
9, No. 3 (Spring 1923), 22-24. This poem Has notibeen
discussed in cummings' criticism to date.

 

6Cummings at the beginning of his career was gen-
erally more antagonistic to critics and readers than he
was later in his career. One possible reason for the
change in attitude may be simply that his audience grew
larger later in his career; therefore he felt less and
less that he was speaking into a vacuum as the years
passed; later in his career he felt that there were quite
a few readers who took his poetry seriously.

7e. e. cummings, "Introduction" to the 1938
edition of Collected Poems, rpt. in Poems 1923-1954
(New York: Harcourt Brace and World, I954), p. 331.

 

 

8Even the satire in 1; poems is directed at them.
We no longer see an angry poet attacking all beside him-
self with Swiftian vehemence; now the reader is assumed
to be with him, sharing the poet's confidence:

the greedy the people

(as if as can yes)

they sell and the buy

and they die for Hecause
though the bell in the steeple
says Why

(1; poems, #29)

CHAPTER VI

CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE:
ELEMENTS GROWING OUT OF THE

IMAGIST TRADITION

Intensity of expression was the central element
in Ezra Pound's Imagist aesthetic, and it is quite likely
that cummings learned his principles of careful word
selection and linguistic compression from Pound and his
fellow Imagists. Cummings began his writing career at
a time when the Imagist movement championed by Ezra
Pound, F. S. Flint and T. E. Hulme was flourishing.

Charles W. Bernardin reports that "e. e. cummings
led the experimentalists" and Robert Hillyer led "the
outraged conservatives" in the Harvard Poetry Society
in the 1912-1916 period. During those years the Poetry
,Society had as guest speakers "Robert Frost, Vachel
Lindsay, John Gould Fletcher, Conrad Aiken, Ezra Pound,
Amy Lowell, and many others."1 Cummings was in the
group of editors and writers who published in The Harvard
Monthly; Bernardin states that "The Harvard Monthly

<xroup was interested in Joseph Conrad, Clive Bell,

110

111

Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, and the other Imagists"

(p. 11). The Harvard Monthly was filled with positive

 

comments about the Imagists during cummings' time at
Harvard--the magazine cummings called "our university's
only serious undergraduate magazine" (1921 50).

George Wickes has further documented the relation-
ship between cummings and the Imagist poets in his book

Americans ip Paris:

 

 

At Harvard he [cummings] had received what might be
called the classic education in modern verse. He

. . . knew Foster Damon who was then reading LaForgue
and Verlaine and who enthusiastically shared such
discoveries as . . . Des Imagistes. And he met Amy
Lowell, whose formidabie presence in Boston made his
generation fully aware of imagism. In 1916 she spoke
to the Harvagd Poetry Society on the subject of vers
libre. . . .

 

Cummings established a friendship with Ezra Pound that
lasted his entire life, as is evident from the many
letters back and forth which may be found in both poets'
Selected Letters. Cummings reported in a 1923 letter to
his mother from Paris "as you may know, I have for some
years been an admirer of Pound's poetry: personally he
sometimes gives me a Father Complex" (Letters, 104). And
in 1957 cummings wrote Charles Norman that “from my
standpoint, not eec but E[zra] P[ound] is the authentic
'innovator'; the true trailblazer of an epoch." Later
cummings refers to Pound as "this selfstyled world's

greatest and most generous literary figure" (Letters, 254).

112

Pound returned cummings' admiration, arranging
for the publication of cummings' poetry in small magazines

like the Transatlantic Review, which was edited by Ford

 

Maddox Ford at the time. Pound also included cummings'
poem "plato told/him:he couldn't/believe it" in his

anthology of poetry entitled Confucius ngummings.3

 

Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Ford Maddox Ford,
Marianne Moore, H. D., Wyndham Lewis and T. S. Eliot
are represented in this collection which reads like an
Imagist anthology, complete with a critical introduction
which promotes the Imagist aesthetic.

Cummings absorbed the Imagist doctrines during
his undergraduate and Masters' degree study at Harvard
from 1911 to 1916. During these years he was exploring
and defining his own aesthetic theory and practice,
moving out of the period in which he wrote poems like
"Epithalamian" (the opening poem in his Collected Poems)
toward his stance by 1923 (when Tulips g Chimneys was
published) as an extreme modernist. The transformation
cummings underwent in his Harvard years of poetry
writing was a major one.

In Eight Harvard Poets, published in 1917 at

 

personal expense in conjunction with seven Of his Harvard
iclassmates, two poems appear which illustrate the changes
'then taking place in cummings' aesthetic theory and

practice. The first poem is a sonnet in the traditional

113

sonnet form, fourteen lines divided into the standard
octave and sestet, standard iambic pentameter meter,
traditional rhyme scheme: abbcabbc defdfe, with a
slight inversion in the sestet for humorous effect,

rhyming "trod" with "God" and "dust" with "Lust“:

A CHORUS GIRL

When thou hast taken thy last applause, and when

The final curtain strikes the world away,

Leaving to shadowy silence and dismay

That stage which shall not know thy smile again,

Lingering a little while I see thee then

Ponder the tinsel part they let thee play;

I see the red mouth tarnished, the face grey,

And smileless silent eyes of Magdalen.

The lights have laughed their last; without, the street

Darkling, awaiteth her whose feet have trod

The silly souls of men to golden dust.

She pauses, in the lintel of defeat,

Her heart breaks in a smile--and she is Lust . . .

Mine also, little painted poem of God.
The celebration of an erotic experience, of watching a
chorus girl's performance, is a poem-content typical Of
cummings--especially when presented ironically and
humorously in a traditional sonnet form (the form tra—
ditionally used to express stately sentiments of courtly
love).

But in this early poem cummings is still demon-

strating his mastery of the traditional form, parodying
it from within its confines, complete with a title, the

capital letter beginning each line, and archaic poetic

language. In 1923, when he included the poem in his

114

"Tulips & Chimneys" manuscript, cummings eliminated
almost all the capital letters (including "god"),

leaving only Magdalen, The (in line 9), and Lust capi-

 

talized. Cummings had decided that capital letters
could be used more effectively for emphasis if they
were not strewn loosely around at beginnings of lines
and of sentences. The beginning of a line is automati-
cally emphasized visually, and the beginning of a sen-
tence is already emphasized by the period or other
punctuation mark preceding it. Cummings eliminated
such capital letters as redundant.

This decision seems to follow an aesthetic doc-
trine established by Ezra Pound in his l912 "CREDO":
“I believe in technique as the test of a man's sin-
cerity; in law when it is ascertainable; in the trampling
down of every convention that impedes or obscures the
determination of the law, or the precise rendering of
the impulse" (Essays, 9). Cummings "violated" the
rules of syntax, punctuation, capitalization and
adapted the structures of traditional forms whenever
the conventional way of doing things impeded the "pre—
cise rendering of the impulse" he was trying to express.

In the 1917 version of "A CHORUS GIRL" the
"trampling down of . . . convention" is minimal. The
poem uses archaic language ("thou," "hast," "thy,"

"awaiteth") and format. In the 1923 version the

115

language remains archaic, but the capitalization and
stanzaic arrangement have been modified from the standard
8-6 line grouping for a sonnet (with the first word in
each line capitalized) to the more organically accurate
organization of 13-1 (with all unnecessary capital
letters eliminated). The 13-1 stanzaic arrangement

is more accurate because the first thirteen lines are

a description of the chorus girl, while the last line

is the "turning" line in which cummings speaks of his
own emotional state directly: "mine [my Lust] also,
little painted poem of god." The 1923 version is number

six in a set of "SONNETS--REALITIES“:

VI

when thou hast taken thy last applause,and when
the final curtain strikes the world away,

leaving to shadowy silence and dismay

that stage which shall not know thy smile again,
lingering a little while i see thee then

ponder the tinsel part they let thee play;

i see the large lips vivid,the face grey,

and silent smileless eyes of Magdalen.

The lights have laughed their last; without,the street
darkling awaiteth her whose feet have trod

the silly souls of men to golden dust:

she pauses on the lintel of defeat,

her heart breaks in a smile--and she is Lust. . . .

mine also, little painted poem of god
(CE, 75)

The title has been eliminated in the 1923 version.
The title is unnecessary because the poem presents the

image of "A CHORUS GIRL"; if this particular title were

116

necessary, it would mean that the poem did not convey its
meaning clearly. Cummings seems to have followed Pound's
advice as printed in the March 1913 issue of Poetry:
"Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not
reveal something."4
In eliminating the title in the 1923 version,
cummings also seems to have followed Pound's advice:
"use no word that does not contribute to the presen-
tation."5 The title is unnecessary because the poem
presents the image of "A CHORUS GIRL.” If this partic-
ular title were necessary, it would mean that the audience
had to be told what kind of person the poem was about,
that the poem did not present its meaning clearly. The
answer would be to change the wording of the poem so
that the idea of a chorus girl came across more clearly.
This is in fact what cummings did. In the 1923

version cummings replaced the words "I see the red mouth

 

tarnished, the face grey" with the more vivid, accurate

 

and specific words "i see the large lips vivid, the face

 

grey." "Large lips" gives the direct presentation of
lips, replacing the more general term "mouth." The use
of the natural object, "large lips," as a substitute for
the less specific "red mouth" illustrates the principle
of finding "the exact word," which cummings, Pound, Ford
Maddox Ford and all the Imagist poets adhered to.6 In a

1917 essay Pound quotes Ford Maddox Hueffer [Ford] as

117

having "pointed out that Wordsworth was so intent on
the ordinary or plain word that he never thought of

hunting for le_mot juste." F. S. Flint's 1913 statement

 

similarly asserted that one of the rules of good poetry-
writing was "to use absolutely no word that does not
contribute to the presentation."7
Pound notes in his 1917 "Retrospect" that H. D.
and Richard Aldington also agreed to the "three principles"
of Imagist poetry printed in that 1913 issue of Poetry
magazine:
1. Direct treatment of the "thing" whether subjective
or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute
to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence

of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a
metronome.

(Essays, 3)

Cummings stated a similar aesthetic stance in a 1920 essay
on Gaston Lachaise. Here, cummings praised I'econom.y of
form through the elimination of unessentials" and asked
that the resulting work of art be a "form which completely
expresses itself, form that perfectly tactilizes the
beholder, as in the case of an electric machine which,
being grasped, will not let the hand go." In asking for
"economy of form" through careful word selection, cum-
mings echoed the Imagist writings of 1913-1917 (Misg,,
15).

118

Cummings‘ principle of word-selection is further
explained in considering the effect of changing the
adjective "tarnished" in the 1917 version of "A CHORUS
GIRL" to "livid" in the 1923 version. "Livid" is more
active than "tarnished," presenting an image of brilliant
anger as opposed to the passive and more abstract "tar-
nished." "Livid" is an unusual, interesting word because
it implies an emotional state; "tarnished" is by contrast
more descriptive, denoting a static state of discolor-
ation. In his 1913 essay Pound urged that the poet
”use no adjective which does.not reveal something"
(Essays, 4). Pound gave as an example of good writing
a line from Shakespeare: "When Shakespeare talks of
the 'Dawn in russet mantle clad' he presents something
which the painter does not present. There is in this
line of his nothing that one can call description; he
presents" (Essays, 6). The word "livid" is surprising
in its accuracy, presenting the brazen, lurid smile
which both expresses "Lust" and evokes "Lust” in the
poem's speaker; "tarnished" is inaccurate since it
accomplishes neither of these objectives. In making
this single word change, cummings selects a more accurate
word, a word which "reveals something" about the woman

and "presents" a vivid image.

119

A second poem from Eight Harvard Poets illustrates

 

the metamorphosis occurring in cummings' work during

his Harvard years. As printed in 1917 the poem reads:

THE LOVER SPEAKS

YOUR little voice
Over the wires came leaping
and I felt suddenly
dizzy
With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
uP
UP
with the pale important
stars and the Humorous
moon
dear girl
How I was crazy how I cried when I heard
over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
your voice

In contrast to the fairly traditional sonnet "A CHORUS
GIRL," this poem's form is determined by its content.
The poem dances across the page as the lover's voice
danced in the speaker's ears. Just as the speaker "was
whirled and tossed into delicious dancing" by the phone
call, so the words leap, jostle and twinkle on the page.

This free-form poem follows Pound's 1913 "CREDO" on

"Form": "I think there is a 'fluid' as well as a 'solid'

120

content, that some poems may have form as a tree has
form, some as water poured into a vase. That most sym-
metrical forms have certain uses. That a vast number of
subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not properly
rendered in symmetrical forms" (Essays, 9). Whereas
cummings felt the subject-matter of "A CHORUS GIRL"

could be poured like water into the pre-set "sonnet"
vase, he apparently felt that the emotion expressed in
"THE LOVER SPEAKS" should grow as a tree grows, into a
free-form shape which would best fit the emotion.

Cummings would alternate between his own version
of the traditional forms and an organic form growing out
of the subject-matter of the poem during the rest of his
career. (Two examples of free-form poems will be dis-
cussed later in this chapter.) But never again would
he use quite so rigid a definition of the sonnet form
as he adhered to in the 1917 sonnet. In varying degrees,
cummings practiced Pound's "CREDO” of "trampling down
. . . every convention that impedes or obscures . . .
the precise rendering of the emotional 'impulse' which
was the subject-matter of each poem" (Essays, 9).

"THE LOVER SPEAKS" also exhibits a characteristic
of the "Impressionist" poem championed by Ford Maddox
(Hueffer) Ford, the idea that "the unit of free verse
is really the conversational sentence of the author."8

The language of the poem seems exaggerated or heightened,

121

but John Dos Passos has described cummings' brilliant
monologues in everyday conversations:
After a couple of brandies on top of the wine Cum-
mings would deliver himself of geysers of talk.
I've never heard anything that remotely approached
it. It was comical ironical learned brilliantly-
colored intricatelycadenced damnably poetic and
sometimes just naughty. It was as if he were spout-
ing pages of prose and verse from an unwritten
volume. Then suddenly he would go off to Patchin
Place #4 to put some of it down before the fountain
ceased to flow.
Cummings seems to have developed a highly individualistic
"personal voice“ which partly stemmed from his natural
verbal abilities and partly was derived from his desire
to create a personal voice in his poetry which could belong
to nobody but himself.

Malcolm Cowley also reports that cummings was "the
most brilliant monologuist I have ever known. What he
poured forth was a mixture of cynical remarks, puns,
hyperboles, outrageous metaphors . . . spoken from the
corner of his . . . mouth: PURE CUMMINGS, as if he were
rehearsing something that would afterward appear in print.
Sometimes it did."10 It is impossible to know whether
"THE LOVER SPEAKS" is a recorded monologue or not; but
certainly the linguistic facility of the poem is not
entirely contrived. Cummings was capable of extempo-

raneously inventing brilliant analogies and metaphors--

the very elements which seem so contrived in his poems

122

apparently were elements essential to his personal voice.
Cummings' letters also show a brilliant monologuist at

work. The editors of his Selected Letters note that

 

several drafts of some letters exist, demonstrating
cummings' devotion to artistic craft even in his cor-
respondence, but that often his dazzling language seems
to have been spontaneous. Language which might seem
contrived to a reader was often simply another example
of cummings' inventive mind at play.

William Carlos Williams, another poet who learned
a great deal from Pound and the Imagists,11 described
the similarities he saw between cummings' use of language
and his own: “to me . . . e. e. cummings means my lan-
guage." Williams went on in his 1946 essay to explain
the "esoteric" qualities of cummings' language as "a
christian [with a lower case "C"] language" that speaks
to "each of us in turn":

To me, of course, e. e. cummings means my lan-
guage. It isn't, of course, mine so much as it is
his, which emphasizes the point. It isn't, pri-
marily, english.

We speak another language. . . .

Esoteric is the word the englishers among us
would give to the languages we americans use at
our best. They are private languages. That is
what cummings seems to be emphasizing, a christian
language--addressing to the private conscience of
each of us in turn.

123

But if, startlingly, each should disclose
itself as understandable to any great number, the
effect would be . . . a veritable revolution, shall
we say, of morals? Of, do we dare to say, love?
Much or even all cummings' poems are evidences of
love.

(Wake, 20)12

As early as 1917 cummings was expressing his "love" of
individuals. "THE LOVER SPEAKS" is a love poem expres-
sing the potential joy language can communicate. The
experience celebrated is a telephone call from his
beloved; nothing but gogds is exchanged; yet the loving
words create an intense joy in the speaker/listener/
audience. The sparkling sprinkle of unusual words
inspires in the reader a similar "dizzy" emotion of
"Jostling and shouting of merry flowers" and "wee skip-

ping high-heeled flames" dancing before our eyes. With

cummings the reader is "whirled and tossed into delicious

dancing/up/Up/with the pale important/stars and the
Humorous moon." As Williams insists, we as readers can
catch this joyful feeling if we open ourselves to the
highly contagious effects of cummings' linguistic fire—

works.

Williams describes that use of words as "a tough-

ness which scorns to avoid fragility":

WOrds are his proper medium, the specific impact
of words, which give them in his work such a
peculiarly unhistoric, historical new world char-
acter. A toughness which scorns to avoid fragility.

124

cummings is the living presence of the drive to
make all our convictions evident by penetrating
through their costumes to the living flesh of the
matter. He avoids the cliché by avoiding the whole
accepted modus of english. He does it, not to be
"p0pular," . . . nor to sell anything, but to lay
bare the actual experience of love, let us say, in
the chance terms which his environment happens to
make apparent to him. He does it to reveal, to
disclose, to free a man from habit.

(Wake, 20-21)

Cummings' speaking style was distinctive as his poetry is
distinctive. He carefully chose each word in each poem
as the Imagist poets chose each word, using "absolutely
no word which does not contribute to the presentation"
(Pound's advice). His poems violate syntactical "laws"
whenever the subject matter of his poem requires an
unusual construction for its apt expression.

In his essay on T. S. Eliot's poetry cummings
appreciated an effect similar to the one Williams found
in cummings' own poems: "the alert hatred of normality,
. . . the unique dimension of intensity, which it amuses
him to substitute in us for the comforting and com-
fortable furniture of reality" (Misc., 27). The methods
cummings admired in Eliot were the same methods Pound
admired in Eliot, and the same methods Williams admired
in cummings' verse: "a vocabulary almost brutally tuned
to attain distinctness; an extraordinarily tight orches-
tration of the shapes of sound; the delicate and careful

murderings--almost invariably interpreted, internally as

125

well as terminally, through near-rhyme and rhyme--of
established tempos by oral rhythms" (Misc., 27-28).
Marianne Moore wrote in praise of cummings: "He does
not make aesthetic mistakes" (Wake, 24).

Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and e. e.
cummings each wrote several poems which exemplify Imagist
poetic theories in practice. In the concluding section of
this chapter I will examine an example of the pure Imagist
poem from Pound's work, one from Williams' work and two
from cummings' final book of poems. Such a comparison
may show that cummings learned the Imagist writing tech-
niques and continued to use those techniques to create
Imagist poems throughout his life, even in his final book
of 12.EEEE§1 whenever the content or subject of the poem
seemed to warrant the use of those techniques.

Using the definition of Imagist goals and methods
that Pound presented in his 1913 essay in Poetgy, we
find that for Pound ”An Image is that which presents an
intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.
. . . It is the presentation of such a complex instan-
taneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation;
that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits;
that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the

13 Pound's

presence of the greatest works of art."
emphasis on speed of presentation is paralleled in

cummings' praise of "those superlative aesthetic

126

victories which are accidents of the complete intelli-
gence, or the intelligence functioning at intuitional
velocity" (Misc., 12). Ezra Pound insisted that it was
”better to present one Image in a lifetime than to pro-
duce voluminous works."14 Pound seems to have been
referring to single-image poems stripped of all philo-
SOphical elaboration and unnecessary ornamentation.

Pound asked that the "image" out of which the
poem was constructed be concrete and tangible--a real
"strawberry" and not simply the vehicle for symbolic
meaning--as in his poem "L'Art" (1910):

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,

Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast
our eyes.

Pound cannot resist proclaiming his presence and his atti-
tude with the exclamation mark and the insistent tone of
"Come, let us feast/our eyes." But otherwise the poem
fits the theoretical prescription: no wasted words,
speed of presentation, and the images intended to be
taken literally.

Perhaps an even better example of Pound's theory
in its purest practice is in William Carlos Williams'

poem "The Red Wheelbarrow,"

127
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white

chickens
Williams manages to keep the speaker almost completely
hidden from view, with only a hint of his attitude toward
the scene coming out in the opening lines "so much depends
upon." We gain a sense of the poet's appreciation of and
celebration of the concrete sensory details of life. A
celebration of colors and objects available to the senses
in a rural community is presented in the poem, but with-
out any of this abstract statement.

The open presentation of images conveys feelings
of intense awareness and 1212.99.21253 directly. The
wheelbarrow may be a symbol of manual labor, the rain
water and chickens may symbolize the natural world
and the juxtaposition may be interpreted symbolically
as the unity of the "human" and "natural" worlds; but
such interpretation is not necessary. The poem functions
simply as a celebration of the world perceivable to our
senses. The chickens may be seen as real chickens and
the wheelbarrow functions well as the garden-store
variety. "No ideas but in things" results in a poetry

of vivid, clear presentation.

128

Cummings knew and appreciated Williams' "wheel-
barrow" poem, as he remarked in a letter written 14 Sep-
tember 1951. In this letter cummings thanks his daughter
Nancy for her gift of a red wheelbarrow. The occasion
reminds cummings of Williams' poem, which he describes
as the Williams poem that he likes best:

thank you a millionmillion times for the marvellous
gift 1 A red wheelbarrow ! A genuine (wooden)one,
not some pseudo tin-bathtub with a rubbertired
diskwheel; praise be. Why, I was so surprised it's
hard to even begin to explain. Quite incidentally,
the only poem of Doctor WCWilliams--someone whom the
undersigned should respect, since he(WCW) (too)
received the Dial Award--which ever truly pleased
me as a poem should(from finish to start and v[ice]-

vlersal) is one affectionately concerning a red
wh[eel]-b[arrow].

(Letters, 214)

In his own work cummings attempted to create poems
which were "accidents of the complete intelligence,"
placing images in juxtaposition with one another such
that the effect on a reader was one similar to Pound's
"intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of
time." Cummings described this effect as "the intelli-
gence functioning at intuitional velocity" (Misc., 17).
Most of his poems were Imagistic in important ways; many
conformed exactly to Imagist aesthetic criteria. Two
poems from his final book stand out as exhibiting ele-

ments of the Imagist aesthetic.

129

One poem of the Imagist type deals with an audi-
tory phenomenon. An auditory effect can perhaps be
rendered best through an auditory medium, as a bird call
is most realistically mimicked by musical instruments.
The mood of "stillness" often occurs in music by placing
a quiet, lyrical section of solo instruments between
loud, full-orchestra sections. But how can music create
"silence"? Only in relation to what has gone before or
after can "stillness" or silence occur in music. It
should follow that poetry, a verbal, auditory medium,
would be unable to recreate the phenomenon of silence.
Yet cummings has succeeded in creating the linguistic

equivalent of "stillness" in this poem:

g can

urPas

the m
Y
SteR
Y

of

s
tianes
s

(22 poems, #42)

130

Txranslated into verbal terms, the letters indicate that
'finothing can surpass the mystery of stillness." In
txreaking up the words into unpronounceable "lines" of
Juetters, cummings has demonstrated the "silent" quality
c>f stillness. His poem also tells us that "stillness"
1.8 the essence of perfection, symbolized by visual sym-
nnetry. Balance and symmetry pervade every aspect of the
Ipoem's form. The poem is divided into seven stanzas,
alternating symmetrically between one and three lines
per stanza: 3-1-3-1-3-1—3. Each of the three-line
stanzas further emphasizes the symmetry of the form by
bracketing the middle line with lines consisting of a
single, identical letter.

A third method of creating poetic symmetry is
the use of capital letters. In lines of four letters,
the capital letters open and close the line, framing the
smaller letters between them; in the five and seven
letter lines, the middle letter is capitalized. The s
(sibilant) letters in the third and seventh stanzas
echo one another visually, providing a more subtle sense
of unity, symmetry, and hence perfection to the experi-
ence being created for us. The result is a conceptual
experience made concrete by a vivid linguistic (yet
nonverbal) technique. We are presented with an "image"
of stillness--yet not an "image" in the ordinary sense

of "a sensory experience." This image, like many of

131

cunmdngs' images, is a "word-portrait" of the phenomenon
being described, in which the form perfectly fits the
meaning, giving the reader a visual, sensual a__n_d_ con-
ceptual experience of the subject of the poem. Form
sand content completely reinforce one another in the
t>est.cummings' poems. Cummings has written many poems
xdhich fit Pound's description of an Imagist poem in that
there are no wasted words, the poem consists of a single
image, and there is no overt philosophizing in the poem.14
In poem #24 from Z§_pggm§_cummdngs gives us his
most perfect example of an Imagist poem. The poem EEEI
sents a visual and linguistic picture of yesterday's
newspaper. His poem presents an objective linguistic
correlative of the emotional and mental processes

involved in the poet's perception of his experience,

watching a newspaper tumbling across a street:

insu nli gh t

o
verand
o
vering

onc
eup
one
tim

e ne wsp aper

132

Ikare cummings uses the kinetic quality of language to
tnfuse a "newspaper” with motion and vitality. The poem
i s an impressionistic word-painting of yesterday's news-
pbaper lying in the sun. A light wind is ruffling the
p>ages, or perhaps somersaulting the paper across a sunlit
sstreet, as indicated by the overall pattern of the letters
on the page: "3" (like the number three). Within that
overall pattern, the letters are combined in a visually
satisfying but verbally fragmented way. in sunlight is

a one-line stanza with its letters grouped in a decreasing

series of letter-units, arranged 4-3-2-1. The final line

of the poem is the mirror-image of in_sunlight, a one-line
stanza with its letters divided into an increasing series
of letter-unity, grouped 1-2-3-4. The stanzas alternate
between one and four lines.

The second stanza, over and overing, describes
the motion of the pages; "ing" is used in conventional
grammar to indicate "action or process" or "something
connected with an action or process." Over is tradi-
tionally an adverb meaning "away from . . . a prone
position" or "on the other side of an intervening space."
Cummings combines the two elements to create a new verb,
an active movement, an over-ing supplants the traditional
conception of "over" as a dead adverbial concept. The
enlivening of gyg£_parallels what happens to the EEZET
23235 under the perceptive poet's gaze. The lines

alternate in length between the single letter 9

133

Lan.expression of wonder) and six letters grouped
'together, both six-letter groups beginning with y. The
nliddle stanza is the single letter A, capitalized and
sset apart as the central focus of the poem to demonstrate
(symbolize) the unique, individual character of the news-
;paper. A simple visual phenomenon is transformed by the
perceptive "poet" (which is in each of us) into an
exciting experience of the unique qualities of this
newspaper in its environment of sunlight and wind. The
other four-line stanza consists of lines made up of

groups of three letters per line. Once upon a time

 

describes the newspaper as being out-of—date, no longer

 

of any use or significance to "mostpeople." It has been
discarded and is now ignored.

Fragmentation of the words into unpronounceable
groups indicates that the words no longer have any mean-
ing since they are outdated and since the movement of
the pages in the wind interferes with our ability to
read the articles. The fragmentation of words empha-
sizes the point that the experience is a visual and felt
experience, not a verbal one. Only the two exclamations
of wonder, 9, make sense when uttered aloud, indicating
that this might be a verbal response of the poet or
reader perceiving the phenomenon.

The poem demonstrates the poet's growing awareness

of the object under surveillance beginning with an initial

‘I' lllllllll l 1"" III. I I'llllal I 1.] I III

134

sense of sunlight with something enclosed or wrapped in
sunlight in the first line-stanza. Next comes the per—
ception of motion with the still unclassified object

moving in an over and over-ing way. The sense of its

 

distinctness, its uniqueness, its individuality comes
next with the single word-stanza A. The mind begins to

categorize this visual phenomenon with once upon a time,

 

trying to decide what the object was called before it
became this fascinating visual experience. Finally the
mind succeeds in labelling what the phenomenon used to
be--A . . . newspaper--and the poem ends. The impli-
cation is that when the classification faculties succeed
in breaking in on a beautiful experience, the experience
ends.

In its concentration on the external, concrete,
physical object (the newspaper), in its focus on a
single experience with a single object, in its tightly
controlled language, and in the presentation of "an
intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of
time" which it presents for us, the poem is certainly
one of the finest poems in the Imagist tradition.

A final reading of the poem links it to Maslow's
psychological insights. Maslow tells us that in a peak
experience our "perceptual experience may be organized
around the object as a centering point rather than being

based upon the ego" (TPB, 79). Cummings' poem is

135

centered around the newspaper. Cummings describes the

 

newspaper as if it had an "independent reality of its
own, and was not dependent" for its existence "on the
beholder" (TPB, 79). Cummings recreates in the first

three stanzas of the poem his state of cognition in

 

which he sees an object "in its own Being, rather than
as something to be used or something to be afraid of,
or to be reacted to in some other human way" (TEE, 76).
The object is seen as having certain individual charac—

teristics: it is in sunlight, it is over and overing,

 

and it is uniquely A. These aspects of the object are
separate from any human use for the object. Then in
the second half of the poem we see the sonnet-like
"turning" as the human uses are recognized and the

object is classified into a generalized once upon a

 

time newspaper. The second part of the poem portrays

 

the "more usual kind of perception which is so frequently
anxiety-based" (TEE, 77). This type of perception simply
classifies objects "into useful or not useful, dangerous
or not dangerous." This classification can be accom-
plished in one quick viewing. "Ngggfto-perceive then
disappears, and thereafter the object or person, now

that it has been catalogued is simply no longer per-
ceived" (TEE, 77). After classification the poem ends.
Only a self-actualizing poet or someone perceiving the

newspaper in the midst of a peak experience would

136

bother to meticulously re-create his perceptual process

and his experience of ig_sunlight over and overing A

 

once upon a time newspaper.

 

 

Looking at cummings' work we find that he often
used all three of Pound's rules for writing Imagist poetry:
"direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or
objective"; "to use absolutely no word that does not con-
tribute to the presentation"; as well as composing accord-
ing to oral rhythms. His primary artistic principle was
that of artistic selection, ensuring that only the best
words were used and only in the very best sequence;
cummings called this principle "intensity." In Thg
Shores 9£_AigAE_Edmund Wilson notes the tendency of
young artists (like cummings) to try to create ”something
in which every word, every cadence, every detail, should
perform a definite function in producing an intense
effect. . . . Ezra Pound and the Imagists, to be sure,
had a good deal to do with this" (p. 15).15

By 1917 the Imagist movement was "no longer a
movement" according to William Pratt. In his "Intro-

duction" to Modern Poetry 32 Miniature: The Imagist Poem,

 

 

 

Pratt lists cummings as among the poets who learned from
Imagist principles without actually allying themselves
in the Imagist doctrinal camp:

Younger poets like e. e. cummings and Archibald

MacLeish would make new poems of the Imagist type,
but without forming any association or publishing

137

further rules. . . . Older poets like Pound, who had
already formed their weapons in the Imagist fire,
would use them to fight bigger wars than the strict
Imagist poem permitted.

(Pratt, 23)16

As writers outside the small group of original Imagistes
began using and changing the 1913-1917 principles of
Imagism, the purity of the movement was absorbed into a
multitude of divergent, individualized styles. Cummings
used Imagist techniques throughout his career, but used
them selectively. He used traditional forms, free forms,
dramatic monologues or pure prose poems depending on the
specific content he was trying to express. In allowing
the form to grow naturally out of the content of each
poem, cummings was an active participant in the tradition

of Organic Form.

CHAPTER VI--NOTES

1Charles W. Bernardin, "John Dos Passos' Harvard
Years," New England Quarterly, 27 (March 1954), 20.

 

2George Wickes, Americans in Paris, 1903-1939
(New York: Doubleday, Paris Review—Editions, 1969),
p. 109. F. W. Dupee and George Stade have also traced
the relationship between Pound and cummings as revealed
in cummings' letters: "When they first met, Pound was
36 and cummings 26. Pound had published his first volume
in 1908 and had long been the leading poet of the (then)
younger generation. Cummings had been introduced to
Pound's poetry by 8. Foster Damon while cummings and
Damon were Harvard undergraduates. . . . Pound's example
contributed greatly to the younger poet's transformation
from a belated Romantic into an extreme Modernist."
Although George Wickes, Charles Norman and F. W. Dupee
have documented the close personal association and friend-
ship between cummings and Imagist poets like Ezra Pound,
Marianne Moore and Amy Lowell, none of these critics has
examined the relationship of cummings' techniques to
Imagist theory and practice.

 

3Ezra Pound and Marcella Span, eds., Confucious
to Cummin s: An Antholo g£_Poet£y (New York: New
Eirections, 1954} .

 

4Ezra Pound, "Language," Poetgy, 1, No. 6 (March
1913), rpt. in Litera Essa s of Ezra Pound (New York:
New Directions, 1918, 19 , 33y, I968 paperback ed.,
p. 4.

5Ibid., p. 7.

6Ezra Pound, "A Retrospect," Literary Essays gf
Ezra Pound, op. cit., p. 7.

 

 

138

139

7Poetgy, 1, No. 6. Hereafter, all quotations
from the Literary Essays of Ezra Pound will be designated
"Essays" in the text, fallawedby the page reference.

 

 

8F. M. Ford, "On Impressionism," Poetry and Drama,
2, No. 2 (June 1914), 175.

 

9John Dos Passos, The Best Times, quoted by Dupee
and Stade in their introductIOn to cummings' Selected
Letters, op. cit., p. xviii.

 

10Malcolm Cowley, "One Man Alone," A Second Flower-
ing, op. cit., 97.

 

11See Linda W. Wagner, The Poems of William Carlos
Williams: A Critical Study (Middletown,—Eonn.: wesleyan
Univers1ty Press, 1964) and The Prose of William Carlos
Williams (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan-University Press,

 

 

 

 

12WCW, "Lower Case Cummings," Harvard Wake, No. 5
(Spring 1946). Hereafter referenced in the text as
"Wake," followed by the page number.

 

13Ezra Pound, "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste,"
Poet , 1, No. 6 (March 1913), 199. Imagist theory is
baseg on a conception of what an "image" is and how
images function in literature. Norman Friedman, in The
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, has defified
“an image" asEfithe reprEHuction in the mindfof a sensation
produced by physical perception." In literary usage the
term refers to "images produced in the mind by language,
whose words and statements may refer either to experiences
which could produce physical perceptions were the reader
actually to have those experiences, or to the sense
impressions themselves. Imagery, whatever its sensory
qualities may be, may function either literally, figura-
tively, symbolically, or in some combination."

Psychologists have identified seven categories
of mental images: (1) visual (sight, which can be further
subdivided for brightness, clarity, color and motion);
(2) auditory (hearing); (3) olfactory (smell); (4) guata-
tory (taste); (5) tactile (touch, which can be further
subdivided for heat, cold, and texture); (6) organic
(awareness of heartbeat, pulse, breathing and digestion);
(7) kinesthetic (awareness of muscle tension and movement).

Friedman has also described "what imagery does in
a poem": "imagery has come to be regarded as a special

 

 

 

140

poetic device. Neither its presence nor the use of one
kind of imagery or another makes a good poem; the poet
needs more than a unified sensibility to compose a poem--
he needs, in addition, certain constructive powers."
Imagery "must be part of a larger whole and cannot in and
of itself constitute a whole" but "must be unified with
all the other elements of a poem (such as rhyme and meter;
stylistic, rhetorical, and grammatical schemes; patterns
of sequence and order; the devices of point of view; the
methods of amplification and condensation; the methods of
selection and omission; aspects of thought and character
and action)." Recognizing "economy" or compression as

"a fundamental artistic principle," Friedman reCOgnizes
"that usually literal imagery is converted into a pseudo-
subject, becoming the symbol of something else as a result
of the speaker's reflective and meditative activity."

14Ibid., pp. 200-01.

15Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light, op. cit.,

 

p. 15.

16William Pratt, "Introduction," Modern Poetry i2
Miniature, The Imagist Poem (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1963), p. 23.

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

CUMMINGS' AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE:
ELEMENTS GROWING OUT OF THE ORGANIC

FORM TRADITION

The Imagist concept that a poem should be designed
to express the poet's feeling (rather than modifying a
psychic experience so as to fit into a pre-existing
literary form) stems from the older tradition of Organic
Form. G. N. Giordano Orsini has traced the origins of
Organic Form through Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Keats and Shelley to the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
In "The Organic Concepts in Aesthetics” Orsini defines
the modern concept of Organic Form as insisting on the
presence of four elements in each poem: (1) each ”aes-
thetic whole" is individual and unique; (2) the "aesthetic
whole" is greater than the sum of its individual parts;
(3) every part is necessary to the effect of the whole,
and there are no unnecessary elements included; (4) all
the parts are interrelated with one another and are

congruent with the total effect of the "aesthetic whole."l

141

142

Many of the poets cummings admired held views
which correlate either implicitly or explicitly with the
principles of organic form. Keats advised Shelley to
"load every rift with ore"; cummings quoted Keats' odes

and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound in his nonlectures as

 

poems which influenced him greatly when he was a young
poet. Coleridge said that a poem proposes to itself
"such delight from the gAglg, as is compatible with a
distinct gratification of each component pagt."2 In
his criticism of Shakespeare, Coleridge added that poetry
permits "a pleasure from the whole consistent with a
consciousness of pleasure from the component parts" and
that it communicates "from each part the greatest sum of
pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure of
the whole."3 Because cummings was a student of the
romantic poets who quoted Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations
of Immortality" in his nonlectures as well as being an
admirer of Shakespeare's work, we may assume that he
was familiar with Coleridge's thoughts on organic form.
Coleridge derived from Plato the idea that "internality,
or self-organization, is one of the characters of the
poetic organism."4

In his article "Organic Form: The Ancient Roots
of a Modern Idea," Orsini analyzes the Platonic dialogues
to show that Plato originated the concept. In the

Phaedrus dialogue, Plato asserts that "the subject of

143

a composition should determine its divisions and arrange-
ment; the subject as conceived by the mind of the author,
in its particularity, not as an abstract scheme."5
In his appreciative review of the work of sculptor
Gaston Lachaise (TAg.2AaA, June 1920) cummings expressed
a parallel concept, that the form of a work of art should
be determined largely by the feeling the artist wished
to express. Cummings worked in words (and paints) as
Lachaise worked in stone, skillfully creating a linguis-
tic sculpture which seemed best suited to expressing the
feeling he wanted to express, "actualizing the original
conception of its creator" (Misc., 23). When asked by
"Mr. Public" in the foreward to Him_"But surely you Aggy
what you're making," cummings replies "Beg pardon, Mr.
Public; I surely 2252 what I'm knowing” (122! 64). In
cummings' aesthetic essence precedes existence; art
attempts to express the artist's feelings in the most
appropriate form, a form growing out of the experience

being communicated.

In Chapter 5 of The Enormous Room, cummings

 

explains that the form of that novel has been designed
to express personal feelings--here, those he felt as a
prisoner facing an indefinite sentence. As in real life,
the prison in the novel serves as a grey, uniform back-
ground (or "box") against which the essence of each

character's personality shows clearly:

144

[The enormous room in which the prisoners are held] is
like a vast grey box in which are laid helter-skelter
a great many toys, each of which is itself completely
significant apart from the always unchanging temporal
dimension which merely contains it along with the
rest. I make this point clear for the benefit of

any of my readers who have not had the distinguished
privilege of being in jail. To those who have been
in jail my meaning is at once apparent; particularly
if they have had the enlightening experience of being
in jail with a perfectly indefinite sentence. How,
in such a case, could events occur and be remembered
otherwise than as individualities distinct from time
itself?

(3, 113)

Characters are described or shown in action as individuals
pulled out of their cultural and social context. All of
the characters are faced with the same circumstances, the
same environment, so their essential generosity or essen-
tial selfishness, their individuality or their conforming
natures--all their personal qualities--stand clearly
revealed. Cummings simulates this environment in the
episodic form of the novel, each episode indistinctly
related in time, allowing one or two characters to
demonstrate his values.

Since each person's every action is "public" to
the audience of his fellow prisoners, the authentic
persons are quickly separated from the nonpersons; the
helpful, loving persons are soon differentiated from the
selfish, spiteful characters. This fact of prison life
is expressed in cummings' novel by the technique of

caricature. Cummings selected the most significant

145

characteristics of each of his fellow prisoners and pre-
sented them in vignettes through which the characters
demonstrated those characteristics vividly.

As he further makes clear in The Enormous Room,
in prison cummings was completely cut off from the past
and felt that the future was totally uncertain (due to
his being given an indefinite sentence); thus he felt
that each moment had to be lived to the fullest. Living
each moment to the fullest, a feeling that also comes in
the midst of Maslow's peak experiences, produces a sense
of "timelessness":

Since one day and the next are the same to such a
prisoner, where does Time come in at all? Obviously,
once the prisoner is habituated to his environment,
once he accepts the fact that speculation as to when
he will regain his liberty cannot shorten the hours
of his incarceration and may very well drive him
into a state of unhappiness (not to say morbidity),
events can no longer succeed each other: whatever
happens, while it may happen in connection with
some other perfectly distinct happening, does not
happen in a scale of temporal priorities--each
happening is self-sufficient, irrespective of
minutes, months, and the other treasures of freedom.
In the novel cummings created the effect of "timelessness"
by presenting scenes not in strict chronological or
"diary" order, but in a collage pattern, juxtaposing key
scenes in which characters reveal important aspects of
their personalities:
It is for this reason that I do not purpose to

inflict upon the reader a diary of my alternative
aliveness and nonexistence at La Ferte--. . . because

146

the diary or time method is a technique which can—
not possibly do justice to timelessness. I shall
(on the contrary)lift from their grey box at
random certain(to me)more or less astonishing

toys . . . whose colours and shapes and textures
are a part of that actual Present--without future
and past--whereof they alone are cognizant who,

so to speak, have submitted to an amputation of
the world.

(93. 113)

The method of these sections of the novel occurs regu-

larly throughout cummings' poems.6

Many poems present brief sketches of individual
personalities who impressed him (either positively or
negatively). The now-famous "Buffalo Bill's/defunct"
is an early example, in which the form is designed to
express cummings' impression of the wild-west show per-

former in action:

1 Buffalo Bill's

defunct
3 who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
6 and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
8 he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is

10 how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

(93, 60; first published in The Dial,
68 [Jan. 1920] 23)
The enjambement of the words "onetwothreefourfive" asks
the reader to rush through them, the speed of reading
acting as a visual and oral equivalent to the speed with

which Buffalo Bill would shoot the "pigeonsjustlikethat."

147

The two segments just quoted make up the longest line of
the poem, representing the attention riveted on the man
as he performs his impressive stunts. The short, broken
lines preceding that climax may signify the casual
glances given the performer as he rides his "stallion"
around the ring prior to the shooting exhibition. The
short, choppy line segments in lines 1-5 also suggest
the impression of a horse galloping across the page; the
sibilants and the "el" consonance in "silver staliion"
emphasize the "smooth"ness of the horseback riding being

celebrated.

The single-word sixth line "Jesus" accurately
depicts the gasp of appreciation elicited from the
audience by the flawless shooting performance. "Jesus"
is dropped slightly at the end of the shooting line,
indicating that a slight pause occurs between the shoot-
ing and the gasp of awe from the audience. It is
ambivalent because it can also go with the next line as
easily--"Jesus, he was a," and in that context conveys
the poet's appreciation of the “handsome man."

The pace of the poem is that of conversational
speech in lines l-5, speeding up rapidly in the sixth
line, then returning to the beginning tempo in lines 8-11:
its shape suggests its movement. The rhythms and tempos
of cummings' poems are derived from the subject matter of

the poem, from the oral rhythms of the poet and from the

148

internal necessities each poem develops as it grows in
the poet's mind. In her essay "Some Notes on Organic
Form," Denise Levertov has described the way a poet
discovers the individual rhythm of each poem: "A mani-
festation of form sense is the sense the poet's ear has
of some rhythmic norm peculiar to a particular poem,
from which the individual lines depart and to which they
return." Levertov goes on to list a group of writers
who have mentioned a similar "rhythmic norm" in their
poems: "I heard Henry Cowell tell that the drone in
Indian music is known as the horizon note." She notes
that Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to a similar element
when he said "the health of the eye demands a horizon."
Levertov considers a "sense of the beat or pulse under-
lying the whole" to be "the horizon note of the poem."
This tempo or rhythm "interacts with the nuances or
forces of feeling which determine emphasis on one word
or another, and decides to a great extent what belongs
to a given line."7

The variable-length lines of cummings' "Buffalo
Bill" poem suggest that cummings was prompted by similar
concerns. The rapid movement of the shooting line cor-
relates with the rapid shooting being described. The
one-word line "Jesus" accurately depicts a single-word
gasp of surprise. In "Buffalo Bill" and in many other

cummings poems the line arrangement creates a rhythm or

149

"pulse" which (in Levertov's words) "relates the needs
of the feeling-force which dominates the cadence to the
needs of the surrounding parts and so to the whole" (PW,
12).

Cummings' observation about his method of writing

The Enormous Room reveals a "form sense" similar to the

 

one Levertov describes. In a letter written 25 November
1919 cummings tells his mother that he has been "making

every paragraph" of The Enormous Room "a thing which

 

seemed good to me,in the same way that a 'crazy quilt' is
made so that every inch of it seems good to me. And so
that if you put your hand over one inch,the other inches
lose in force. And so that in every inch there is a
binding rhythm which integrates the whole thing and
makes it a single moving ThingInItself" (Letters, 64).
Later in this letter he adds "It is not a question of
cold facts per se. That is merely a fabric:to put this
fabric at the mercy of an Everlasting Rhythm is some-
thingelse" (Letters, 64). This "binding rhythm" cor-
relates with Ezra Pound's "absolute rhythm" which every
piece of writing needs to have, "a rhythm which cor-
responds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to
be expressed."8 Different from the iambic pentameter

of a traditional sonnet, this rhythm is more a matter of
tempo, like the tempo markings in a musical composition.

In the nursery rhyme “Hickory dickory dock, the mouse

150

ran up the clock" the tempo is rapid-paced with many
hard consonants and short vowel sounds which invite the
reader to race through the lines. In contrast, the
prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my
soul to keep/if I should die before I wake/I pray the
Lord my soul to take“ is constructed of long, open
vowel sounds and has a distinctively meditative tone.

As examples of variation in tempo in cummings'
work, one could turn to any number of early or middle
period poems; however, to demonstrate that cummings
continued to listen to his own lines carefully through-
out his career, I will use poem #44 from 12 292mg which
has the added advantage of being based on the "now I lay
me down" prayer discussed above:

Now i lay(with everywhere around)

me(the great dim deep sound

of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and

what a gently welcoming darkestness--

now i lay me down(in a most steep

more than music)feeling that sunlight is

(life and day are)only loaned:whereas

night is given(night and death and the rain

are given;and given is how beautifully snow)

now i lay me down to dream of(nothing

i or any somebody or you

can begin to begin to imagine)

something which nobody may keep.
now i lay me down to dream of Spring

151

Cummings here takes a children's prayer and develops
it into an intense meditation which builds to a con-
vincing and triumphant "yes" attitude toward death
(and spiritual living). There is no prayerful begging
for a Father-figure "Lord" to save the supplicant's
"soul" from some unstated horror. Instead we are
given cummings' deep feeling that dying is yet another
form of self-transcendence, a movement through "dream"
to rebirth in "Spring."

The fourteen lines suggest a sonnet (cummings
variety), with the stanza division an unusual 3-1-4-1-3,
plus a concluding couplet. Visual symmetry suggests the
peacefulness of the feeling being expressed, and the
tempo is not that of a dirge but that of one evoking
the Lord's Prayer.

Every line of the poem is focused on a celebration
of the only two capitalized word-symbols in the poem,
"Now" and "Spring." The second line tolls forth the
four accented syllables in succession like a celebrating
liberty-bell: "great dim deep sound" of a gentle,
natural, cyclical occurrence "of rain." The four
accented words juxtaposed in sequence and the alliter-
ation of "d" slow the reading of this line to establish
the stately, meditative tempo of the poem. Long, open
vowel sounds abound throughout the poem and slow the

reading pace: Now, around, me, deep, sound, rain,

 

 

152

nowhere, are examples in the first stanza. Internal
rhyme of open vowel sounds establishes a soothing sense

of peacefulness (deep, steep, keep; around, sound); the

 

 

 

rhymes are supplemented by assonance (mg, dream; down,

 

29!); and many words are repeated from stanza to stanza
to give a sense of unity to the poem (N9! i lay_in lines
1, 5, 10, 14; m§_in lines 2, 5, 10, 14; giy§p_three times
in lines 8, 9; pigpp_and £232 are also repeated).

The form is expressive of the meaning, all parts
integrated, with an "Everlasting Rhythm" moving the
sonnet toward the transcendent climax in the final line:
"now i lay me down to dream of Spring." The whole fabric
of the poem has built toward this line so well that the
climax seems absolutely "right" and cathartic; death has
been successfully transformed into "Spring" through con-
centration on the particular, natural, cyclical elements
of "Now."

Cummings was introduced to Aristotle at Harvard,
so was probably familiar with the important element
Aristotle added to Plato's original statement about
organic form: that "the subject of a composition
should determine its divisions and arrangement."9 In
his Poetics Aristotle added the idea that "any alter-
ation of the parts involves an alteration of the whole."10
Aristotle's idea was echoed by Henry James in his "Art

of Fiction" essay, and cummings' knowledge of the work

153

of Henry James came from an even earlier introduction.
Since William James, Henry's philosopher-brother, intro-
duced Estlin's parents and remained as the next door
neighbor in Cambridge all the time Estlin was growing
up, and because Henry James was one of the writers

appreciatively discussed by the Harvard Monthly staff,

 

cummings would very likely have been familiar with the
novelist's theory of organic form: "a novel is a living
thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism,
and in proportion as it lives will be found, I think,

that in each of the parts there is something of each of

the other parts."11 In The Enormous Room cummings

adheres to the principle of selecting only the most
important details (an Imagist technique as well) so as
to make each part of the novel contribute to the overall
effect. In a letter to his mother written while he was

writing the novel, he explains his methodology:

As for the Story Of The Great War Seen From The
Windows Of Nowhere,please don't expect a speedy
conclusion or rather completion of this narrative
[The Enormous Room]; for this reason:that in con-
senting(it almost amounted to that)to "do the
thing up" I did not forego my prerogative as
artist,to wit--the making of every paragraph a
thing which seemed good to me,in the same way that
a "crazy-quilt" is made so that every inch of it
seems good to me. And so that if you put your hand
over one inch,the other inches lose in force.

(Letters, 63-64)

154

As in Aristotle's theory, cummings here asserts that he
is selecting only those details essential to creating a
unified whole, an organic unity built so that "any alter-
ation of the parts involves an alteration of the whole."
Cummings' strict insistence throughout his life that
each piece of writing be printed exactly as_is, with no
deletions or substitutions, demonstrates that he held
this view of his work throughout his career.

In a 1935 letter to his Aunt Jane, cummings
described the difficulty of translating his typed poems
into the variable spacing of the printing linotype machine.
Whereas a typewriter space is a fixed distance on the page
regardless of which letter is typed, the linotype machine
uses less space for an "i" character than it does for an
"m" character. This was a visual disaster for a poet who
had carefully selected his words so as to present a visual
impression of the subject of his poem; suddenly the visual
picture was distorted automatically (without the poet's
consent):

. . . am fighting--forwarded & backed by a corps of
loyal assistants--to retranslate 71 poems out of
typewriter language into linotype-ese. This is not
so easy as one might think;consider, if you dare,
that whenever a typewriter "key" is "struck" the
"carriage" moves a given amount and the "line"
advances recklessly or individualistically. Then
consider that the linotype (being a gadget)inflicts
a preestablished whole--the type "line"--on every
smallest part; so that words,1etters,punctuation
marks &(most important of all)spaces-between-these

various elements,awake to find themselves rearranged
automatically"for the benefit of the community" as

155

politicians say. Oddly,this malforming or standard-
izing process is technically called "justify"ing:
thanks to it,the righthand margin of any printed
page which has been "set" on a linotype has a neat
artificial even-ness--which the socalled world-at-
socalled-large considers indispensable forsooth.

(Letters, 141)

Cummings goes on to describe himself as "the army of the
Organic" attempting to march against "Mechanism":
. . . with l0,000th-of-an-inch(or whatever)"hair-
spaces";you should watch me arguing for two and a
half hours(or some such)over the distance between
the last letter of a certain word and the comma

apparently following that letter but actually pre-
ceding the entire next word. . . .

(Letters, 141)

Such a concern for the interrelation of all parts to the
effect of the whole, including the spacing between letters
and between marks of punctuation, echoes Aristotle's con-
cern that "any alteration of the parts involves an alter-
ation of the whole" and places cummings among the propo-
nents of organic form.

Cummingsadded a visual aspect to the traditional
concept of organic form. In a letter to Charles A.
Pearce, editor at Harcourt, Brace at the end of May,
1937, the poet explained: "Concerning format: . . .
what i care infinitely is that each poempicture should
remain intact. Why? Possibly because, with a few
exceptions, my poems are essentially pictures. And

(in my naif way) i believe that you're one of the few

156

people in America who can work out such a combination of
typesize and papersize as will allow every picture to
breathe its particular life (no "runover" lines) on its
own private world."12

Poem #58, in Z§.ppgms, for example, presents a
linguistic drawing of a chipmunk asleep on a boulder.
Since the experience was for cummings primarily a visual
one of seeing the chipmunk lying still, sound asleep,

making no sound, he has broken most of the words into

unpronouncable but visually symmetrical letterclusters:

81511118:

sil
e
nce
e

very

w
here
noon
e

is exc

8P
t
on
t

his

b
oul
der
a

drea(chipmunk)ming

157

The few pronouncable words (which are often words dis-
covered inside other words) present the chipmunk's con—
sciousness and the "lesson“ which has been derived from
the scene by the poet who pauses to meditate at the scene
of the sleeping animal. The entire poem, unified by the
reader who perceives the words in their traditional order,
is: "and sun and silence everywhere no-one is except on
this boulder a dreaming chipmunk."

The pronouncable syllables singled out by the
poet's symmetrical, visual arrangement of letters high-
light the immediacy of the experience, the entire existence
of the animal (and the admiring poet) in the present
moment of sensation: "sun, very here, noon, IS, on, his,
chipmunk." The poem is a very simple statement, yet it
yields rich rewards to the careful reader and re-reader
of its lines. Silence, stillness, sleep and dreaming
are found in the context of cummings' other poems to be
aspects of or analogous to "death." Thus one implication
of the poem is that living, sleeping, dreaming and dying
are all pleasant life-processes--like taking a noon siesta
on a boulder in the middle of a still forest clearing.

If we accept the poet's invitation and read from
the beginning of the poem to its end, then begin again
(the Opening "&" implies a preceding statement), we find
that there are at least three readings of the poem, each

reading adding to the total effect (the organic whole).

158

Once we have noticed the first impression of the scene
with the poet ("sun, silence, noon," the chipmunk in the
midst of everything), next we put all the separate parts
of words together into their normal word order, and
finally we may notice the symmetry of the lines and begin
to ask why the poet decided to put the "chipmunk" in
parentheses. Several possible answers occur immediately,
although the strategy of the poem is to allow each reader
to meditate the question for him/herself. Once we notice
that all of the things we normally classify as "objective
reality" are grouped outside the parentheses in the same
category as "dreaming," and that only the individual
animal "chipmunk" is enclosed in parentheses, we are
launched into philosophical speculation. What is cum?
mings' view of the logical distinction between dream and
objective reality? Is the word "chipmunk" being used to

represent an individual, and therefore someone alive and

 

unclassifiable? Or is the word being used to symbolize
what "mostpeOple" do when they see an individual, that
is, immediately classify him with some group designation?
In most cummings poems the answer to such questions is
"all of the above," and so it is with this poem.

In the 1927 introduction to Him_the ”Author"
answers the harassing question of the "Public" (Mostpeople)
with a statement that helps us to understand the "chipmunk"

poem:

159

Author: And so far as you're concerned "life" is a
verb of two voices--active, to do,and pas-
sive,to dream. Others believe doing to be
only a kind of dreaming. Still others have
discovered(in a mirror surrounded with
mirrors),something harder than silence but
softer than falling; the third voice of
"life",which believes itself and which can-
not mean because it is.

Public: Bravo, but are such persons good for any-
thing in particular?

Author: They are good for nothing but walking upright

in the cordial revelation of the fatal re-
flexive.

The chipmunk is doing two things which our Author respects

above all other things: he is being nobody-but-himself,
lying on his boulder enjoying the noon sun; and he is
"dreapung" (which includes the central word "am," as we
know from other cummings poems). Living in "the cordial
revelation of the fatal reflexive" means that an author
or a poet must be self-aware, aware of everything going
on inside and outside of himself at every instant of
"now"-time, and must have his/her imagination engaged

at all times. To mostpeople, imagination equals "dream-
ing"; but to cummings an active/meditative "dreaming" is
the essence of "am" (being). The person who thinks a
chipmunk is a ridiculous subject for a poem probably
overlooks a vast number of the other life experiences
which will provide food for meditation if attended to

with an intense, appreciative "yes" attitude.

160

Thus every aspect of the poem contributes to its
effectiveness, including the apparently mundane rodent
who occupies stage center. The poem expresses cummings'
life view, jostles the reader's preconception of what
subjects are "fit" for poetry and serves as a guide for
meditative processes. Thus the form of the "chipmunk"
poem may be seen to have evolved directly from the exper-
ience of meditation which the poem celebrates.

Cummings insisted upon leaving the process of
finding the appropriate form in the material as a
"mystery," and hence incapable of rational explanation.
However, other authors who also see themselves as par—
ticipants in the organic form tradition have attempted
to describe the process by which one discovers significant
form within the subject of the poem. Denise Levertov,

a contemporary exponent of organic form, has provided
a critical vocabulary through which we can better under-
stand cummings' method of composition.

Levertov's essay "Some Notes On Organic Form"
stands as the most thorough discussion by a practicing
poet of the creative process of organic formulation
presently available. She defines Gerard Manley Hopkins'
term Inscape as referring to "intrinsic form," that is
"the pattern of essential characteristics both in single
objects and (what is more interesting) in objects in a

state of relation to each other." Hopkins used another

161

term, "instress," to "denote the experiencing of the
perception of inscape. . . ." Levertov continues, "in
thinking of the process of poetry as I know it, I extend
the use of these words, which he seems to have used
mainly in reference to sensory phenomena, to include
intellectual and emotional experience as well; I would
speak of the inscape of an experience (which might be
composed of any and all of these elements, including the
sensory) or of the inscape of a sequence or constellation
of experiences" (AW, 7).

Levertov's "sequence or constellation of exper-
iences" achieves the same ”sense of sudden liberation"
the Imagist poets attempted to achieve through an "intel-
lectual and emotional complex" of images. Cummings
attempted to achieve a similar effect with his aesthetic
of "intensity"; cummings described the effect he was
trying to achieve as "the intelligence functioning at
intuitional velocity" (Aisg., l7), and elsewhere as
"involving" the reader "in a new and fundamental kinesis"
in which the reader becomes a "protagonist of the child's
vision.” The complex is both intellectual and emotional
for cummings, with emphasis on liberating emotion from
mental restrictions, and the goal to be achieved in
writing a poem is "finally to liberate the actual crisp
organic squirm--the IS" (Miss., 19). We need Levertov's

essay to explain the process because cummings is

162

deliberately ambiguous about it, leaving it in the realm
of "mystery." Cummings characteristically distrusts
rational processes, yet he realizes too that comprehension
of language begins as a rational process. He asks that

we "allow our intelligences to be digested"; a good poem
requires of us "an intelligent process of the highest
order, namely the negation on our part, by thinking, of
thinking." Only then are we free to fully comprehend

the poem's "significance" as an intellectual and emotional
complex (Aisg., 18).

Levertov continues in her essay to state that "a
partial definition . . . of organic poetry might be that
it is a method of apperception, i.e., of recognizing what
we perceive, and is based on an intuition of an order,

a form beyond forms, in which forms partake, and of which
man's creative works are analogies, resemblances, natural
allegories. Such poetry is exploratory" (AW, 7). We
have seen the exploratory nature of cummings' poetry,13

and in the final letter in Selected Letters cummings

 

gives a reason quite similar to Levertov's for the

exploratory nature of his poetic forms:

Here's hoping that what you [Matti Meged, Israeli
writer and teacher] call "an independent world, con-
sistent of spiritual elements only and resistable

to all destruction" may remain the undersigned's
solace,challenge,home,unknownness,& shieldspearsword
while his earthly life lasts! That such a world
needs no excuse for itself is(of course)always

being rediscovered:less than a year ago,Marion

163

brought a "remaindered"(i.e. financially worthless)
volume wherein I met these wonderful words, trans-
lated from the Greek of Plato's Republic:
"it"(the Ideal State)“is laid up in heaven as a
pattern for him who wills to see,and seeing to
found a city in himself. Whether it exists any-
where or ever will exist is no matter. His conduct
will be an expression of the laws of that city alone,
and of no other."
Both cummings and Levertov have "an intuition of order"
which seems to be similar to Plato's "Ideal State."
Cummings' poems, like T. S. Eliot's "objective correla-
tive," are "analogies" of the "form beyond forms, in
which forms partake" [in Levertov's words].

In that final letter cummings goes on to explain
the attention which he, the Imagists and the proponents
of Organic Form all devote to the image, the specific
object as it appears in the external world:

What can mere "use" say to the truth underlying
those noble words--the truth which you yourself
call "man's own and true domain"? How infinitely
morethanright you are in feeling that instead of
"detach"ing you from life, "it teaches me to attend
only to this domain,where the word 'life' is still
meaningful, intense, has a chance of growth and

victory"!
--bravissimo !

(Letters, 275-76)

The insistence that Plato's natural "pattern" is present
in the things of this world and is perceivable by the
poet who seeks to discover that pattern in natural
objects and events may also be found in the writings

of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

164

Emerson is credited as being the first American
theoretician and practitioner of organic form. His
Journals and essays Nature and The Poet present a theory
of poetic inspiration similar to that proposed by Plato,
Aristotle and the British Romantics, and anticipatory of
cummings and Levertov. Emerson began his career as a
Unitarian minister; Edward Cummings, Sr. was also a
Unitarian minister. Cummings discussed Emerson in
letters to his father and quoted Emerson in EIMI, the
diary of his trip to Russia. Cummings' concept of
"Individuality" may be based partly on Emerson's concept
of "Self Reliance.“ The young cummings would have
encountered Emerson's ideas wherever he turned as he
grew up in Cambridge, and many of those ideas seem to
have been absorbed into cummings' life view. For
example, in his Journals Emerson presents this theory
of organic form:

The poet . . . resigns himself to his mood, and

that thought which agitated him is expressed, but
. . . in a manner totally new. The expression is
organic, or the new type which things themselves
take when liberated. As, in the sun, objects
paint their images on the retina of the eye, so
they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe,
tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their
essence in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of
things into higher organic forms is their change
into melodies. Over everything stands its . . .
soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected
by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected
by a melody. The sea, the mountainridge, Niagara,
and every flowerbed, pre-exist, or super-exist,

in pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air,
and when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently

165

fine, he overhears them and endeavors to write down
the notes without diluting or depraving them. . . .
A rhyme in one of our sonnets should not be less
pleasing than the iterated nodes of a seashell, or
the resembling difference of a group of flowers.

. . . A tempest is a rough ode, without falsehood
or rant; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped
and storied, is an epic song, subordinating how many
admirably executed parts. Why should not the sym-
metry and truth that modulate these, glide into our
spirits, and we participate the invention of nature?

The insight, which expresses itself by what is
called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing,
which does not come by study, but by the intellect
being where and what it sees; by sharing the path or
circuit of things through forms, and so making them
trans-lucid to others. . . . The condition of true
naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself
to the divine aura which breathes through forms,
and accompanying that.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is
not inactive in other men. The metamorphosis excites
in the beholder an emotion of joy. The use of symbols
has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration
for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand which
makes us dance and run about happily, like children.
We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar
into the open air. This is the effect on us of
tropes, fables, oracles and all poetic forms.14

Emerson stresses the concept of the poem coming spon-
taneously from the poet's perception of his experience.
He was traditional in feeling that every experience had
its proper equivalent expression in a traditional form
or genre; but he insists that the experience suggest its
proper form. Cummings often felt that his experiences
could best be expressed in more visual than musical forms
of word composition, and created new "forms" to more
perfectly express his perceptions of the world and his
feelings about those perceptions. Cummings also was

more interested in the unique mode of expression as it

166

conveyed a very individual and unique perception. He
wrote many sonnets and ballads, using traditional forms
when they seemed to express his perception most per-
fectly; but he always took his cue directly from the
experience itself; if it were a visual experience, he
often used simply paint and canvas to express its artis-
tic equivalent; if it were both visual and aural he used
poetry which had a visual element as well as a vocal
quality; if the experience were primarily an aural or
vocal one he used one of the traditional lyric forms to
express it, but adapted the form to more perfectly express
his perception of the experience.

Cummings knew the traditional forms well and
wrote fine poems in those forms whenever the experience
dictated their use. An example of the traditional cum-
mings is this sonnet from XAIPE, poem number 65 mentioned
earlier in a different connection:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing—-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

167

The closing couplet echoes the following lines from Walt
Whitman's "Preface" to the 1855 edition of Leaves pf
Grass:
The fruition of beauty is no chance hit or miss
. . . it is inevitable as life . . . it is exact
and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight pro-
ceeds another eyesight and from the hearing pro-
ceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds

another voice eternally curious of the harmony of
things with man.

(Whitman. 142)

Cummings exhibits the love of life and the fascination
with each experience which marks Emerson's, Whitman's
and Levertov's primary requirements for the poetic sensi-
bility. In the sonnet here quoted cummings even expresses
a sense of "order" in that man and nature are seen as a
unified whole. The poet is able to find in nature an
"objective correlative" for his feelings of joy in living;
cummings finds beauty, whether in nature or in art, to be
as "inevitable as life" in exactly the same way Whitman
describes his own sense of beauty, as a miraculous
awakening of the senses and the poetic sensibility to
new, exciting possibilities, combinations and perceptions
of experience.

Cummings' sonnet further acts to liberate the
traditional sonnet form from the kind of rigidity which
William Carlos Williams has criticized in his essay "Of

Medicine and Poetry" :

168

. . . a rich opportunity for development lies
before us at this point. [Through experimentation
with forms we can find] ways of managing the lan-
guage, new ways. Primarily it means to me oppor-
tunity to expand the structure, the basis, the
actual making of the poem. . . .

It is . . . in the mouths of the living, that
the language is changing and giving new means for
expanded possibilities in literary expression and,
I add, basic structure--the most important of all.

. . . But before I extol too much and advocate
the experimental method, let me emphasize that,
like God's creation, the objective is not experi-
mentation but map, In our case, poems!

. . . Do you not see now why I have been
inveighing against the sonnet all these years?

And why it has been so violently defended?
Because it is a form which does not admit of the
slightest structural change in its composition.

(Williams, 253)15

Cummings uses a modified sonnet form.when the experience
seems to call for a sonnet; but he alters its traditional
rigidities to conform to the particular experience he is
attempting to convey to his readers. A kind of visual
rhyme is being used in the second and fourth lines--the
final two letters of the line are identical, although

the sounds are slant rhymes at best (tress/yap). The
tenth and twelfth lines make no attempt to rhyme, even
visually (no/You). The final couplet uses only two con-
sonant sounds to approximate a form of rhyme, the A and
g sounds in "and"/"opened." As cummings reads this poem
on his record the first stanza has five stresses per line,
unevenly distributed so as to emphasize meaning and not
rhythm. The second stanza uses four stresses per line.

The third stanza consists of an uneven number of stresses

169

per line: 4, 4, 5, 3 respectively. The couplet contains
four and five stresses in each of its lines. Rhythm and
rhyme are subordinate to meaning; alliteration, con-
sonance and assonance support the meaning; punctuation
supports the meaning; everything in the poem contributes
to meaning. Form and structure grow out of the experience
and express it not as one of a million similar sonnet-type
experiences, but as a unique perception which happens to
express itself in a sonnet-like poem. Cummings had
overcome the rigidities of the sonnet form.without
entirely throwing it out, as Williams' "inveighing"
would seem to ask.
Thus cummings consistently avoids falling into

the trap Levertov indicates in her lecture "Asking the
Fact for the Form":

There are many poets who do not agree that in the

best poetry "the sense dictates the rhythm."

Their argument is that a form, a chosen, pre-

conceived form, is a discipline to which they must

submit their otherwise formless material, and that

the stricter the discipline the more the material

is purged of dross. I would not deny that many

good poems have been written by poets who hold

this belief; but I think this is rather in spite

of, than because of it.
Cummings is one of those "gifted poets" Levertov describes
who,

. . . when his sense of language is original and

he is indeed inspired, that is, when the breath of

his content blows through him like the wind in a
tree, then poetry overcomes, overrules, the

170

limitations he has imposed on it. When a poet
using preordained forms, however, is not thus
seized and overruled, he is more likely to dis-
tort his material than is a poet working in
organic forms; he is more likely, for obvious
reasons, to pad out his lines, and the exigencies
of rhymes that are bound to occur at strictly
prescribed intervals have led many a poet into
saying a great deal that he did not mean.

Levertov described in a later essay her method of writing
in organic form, a method I imagine cummings might easily

have used himself:

How does one go about such poetry? I think it's
like this: First, there must be an experience, a
sequence or constellation of perceptions of suf-
ficient interest, felt by the poet intensely enough
to demand of him their equivalence in words: he is
brou ht pp 5 eech. . . . The beginning of the ful-
filIment of t is demand is to contemplate, to medi-
tate; words which connote a state in which the heat
of feeling warms the intellect. . . . The experience
is not fully known until it is manifested in the
poem which reveals its form. . . . Certainly the
process of choosing a structure and conforming
honorably to its demands is not, in my experience,
comparable. The organic process, in which one
doesn't know what is going to happen next, uses
more of oneself, more areas of one's being are
called into play. This partially answers one of
the questions I have posited: why I believe this
approach to poetry is of value. Because the more
areas called into play in the poet, the more pro-
found the source of image and symbol, the deeper
the responses awakened in the reader. Deep calleth
unto deep.

. . . Form is never more than a revelation of
content.17

Cummings' poetry demonstrates that he agreed certainly
with Levertov's comment "Form is never more than a

revelation of content." Without ever having made a

171

loud, theoretical defense of the concept, e. e. cummings

was one of the finest practitioners of organic form.18

CHAPTE R VI I--NOTES

1G. N. G. Orsini, "The Organic Concepts in Aes-
thetics," Comparative Literature, 21 (Winter 1969), 5.

 

2Biographia, II, Chapter 14.

 

3T. M. Raysor, ed., "Definition of Poetry,"
Shakespearian Criticism, I, p. 148.

 

4William K. Wimsatt, "Organic Form: Some Questions
About A Metaphor," Organic Form: The Life of An Idea,
ed. G. S. Rousseau (Boston: Routleage & Regan—PauI Ltd.,
1972), p. 70.

 

SPlato, Phaedrus as translated by Jowett, lines
268E, 269A and C, quoted by G. N. Orsini in ”The Ancient
Roots of a Modern Idea," Organic Form: The Life of An
Idea, ed. G. S. Rousseau (Boston: Routleage & KeganEPaul
Ltd., 1972), pp. 7-24. Cummings was introduced to Plato
at Harvard, where he received his B. A. degree "magna
cum laude" in 1915, as well as an M.A. degree in liter-
ature in 1916. In i, six nonlectures he reports receiv-
ing at Harvard a large dose of cIassICal philosophy
including Plato, "a glimpse of Homer, a more than glimpse
of Aeschylus Sophocles Euripedes and Aristophanes"
(i6n, 47). He was familiar with Plato's dialogues and
wIEH the Republic, as we know from his drama Anthropos:
The Future of Art, which is a retelling of Plato‘s
EIIegory of—Eh€_5ave. He quotes from Plato's Republic
in his Letters, 275.

 

 

 

6Contemporary novelists have used techniques simi-
lar to cummings' to describe the existential feeling of
being trapped or imprisoned in a madhouse (America),
living out a life which has no definite termination date
(death) and feeling that everything which goes on around
them is without ultimate meaning. Barthelme's Snow White,
Billy Pilgrim's time-tripping in Vbnnegut's Slaughterhouse

 

172

173

Five and Pynchon's novels (especially The Crying of

£25 Ag_and 2) all present a flood of experiences fifthout
cause and effect, a series of vignettes "unstuck in time."
The chief difference between these contemporary novelists
and cummings may be that cummings believes in the positive
potential in each human being, while most contemporary
novelists are overwhelmed by the potential for evil har-
bored in each human soul.

 

 

7Denise Levertov, "Some Notes on Organic Form,"
first published in Poetry, 106, No. 6 (September 1965),
rpt. in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 20 (New York:
New Directions, 1968) aid in Naked Poet , _3. Stephen
Berg and Robert Mezey (New YorE: BoEBs-Merrill, 1969),
pp. 141-50. Also reprinted in Denise Levertov's The
Poet ip_the World (New York: New Directions, 1973YT
pp. 7-13. This quote appears on page 7 of Poet in the
World, which will hereafter be designated in the text as
"PW," followed by the page reference.

 

 

 

8Ezra Pound, "Vorticism," Fortnightlnyeview,
96 (September 1, 1914), 463.

 

9Orsini, "The Organic Concepts in Aesthetics,"
op. cit., p. S.

loOrsini, "The Ancient Roots of a Modern Idea,"
op. cit., 16. See Aristotle's Poetics, lines 1451, A32.

11Henry James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 596.

12Letter cited by Charles Norman, MM, 197.

13Many of his poems are exploratory in seeking to
discover and express a linguistic analogy of a perceptual
process. This creative process corresponds with an ele-
ment found by William K. Wimsatt in the aesthetic of
virtually every proponent of organic form: "What we
call the 'finished product', the poem, is a moment of
spiritual activity, hypostatized, remembered, recorded,
repeated. The human psyche makes the poem out of itself,
or offers a remembered action of itself as the poem"
(Wimsatt, 68). Nearly all of cummings' later poetry
attempts to express moments "of spiritual activity," or
"peak experiences" in Maslow's terms, in a linguistic
framework.

174

14Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Selections
from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen E. Whicher (Boston:
Houghton MiffIin Co., 1957, 1960), rpt. in American
Poetic Theory, ed. George Perkins (New York: HoIt,
RIheHErt, Winston, 1972), pp. 105-08.

 

 

 

15William Carlos Williams, "Of Medicine and
Poetry," 253.

6Denise Levertov, “Asking the Fact for the Form,“
a lecture quoted by Linda W. Wagner in Denise Levertov
(Newhaven, Conn.: College & University Press, I967),
Twayne's American Authors Series, p. 93.

17Denise Levertov, "Some Notes on Organic Form,"

PW, 8.

18The implications of the theory of organic form
for literary critics have been summarized in the Princeton
Encyclppedia of Poetpy and Poetics. The critic, faced
with a work of—art thCh is basedIOn principles of organic
form, should be chiefly concerned with "the unity of the
literary work." Since the parts of a work of organic form
are designed as integrated elements of an organic whole,
they must "have qualities . . . or effects which they
would not have separately." Therefore "the most important
excellence that can be attributed to any of the parts is
to show that it is a necessary element of that whole."
The Imagist principle of word selection was designed to
assure that all words in the poem were absolutely neces-
sary to the presentation; word selection is thus one method
of creating an organically integrated work of art, making
Imagism a set of techniques designed to create a work of
art which adheres to the standards of organic form. "If
all the distinguishable parts of a whole are essential
and in the proper order and if the whole lacks no part
necessary for its completeness, then the parts are
'organically related' and the whole has 'organic unity'!"
(p. 594). According to these criteria, the cummings
critic should concentrate on the overall effect of the
poem first, proceeding next to a consideration of the
parts and their contribution to the whole. This is, in
fact, the critical method I have used, and is the criti-
cal method which arrives at the most accurate assessment
of contemporary poems.

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

As the previous chapters have suggested, cummings
is among the poets for whom the form of the poem is
derived from its subject matter, from the artist's per-
sonal mode of expression and from the artist's feeling
about the subject matter of the poem. "Craft" is still
important to the practitioners of Imagism, VOrticism and
Organic Form, but "craft" is no longer limited to the
carving of a "good sonnet" or a "perfect ode" in the tra-
ditional manner. Each of the modern movements builds on
the preceding movement's aims and accomplishments. The
trend is toward concreteness of sensory experience as
the highest value in the poem, with technical emphasis
shifting away from the obvious (rhyme, end-rhyme, simple
and repetitive rhythm) toward the subtle (alliteration,
assonance, consonance complex musical phrasing, the
rhythm—patterns of the poet's individual speech char-
acteristics); away from the stereotypical (traditional

forms) toward the unique and inndvative.

175

176

As twentieth century American society has put
more and more pressure on the mass of its citizens to
conform, American poets have reacted further toward the
opposite pole of individuality. Cummings was one of the
greatest experimenters in an age of literary experimen-
tation--the first two decades of this century. He par-
ticipated in the experiments of the Imagists and Vorti-
cists; then used techniques he learned from every "school"
plus several of his own invention to make each of his
poems an "organic unity" of form and content. We have
seen that cummings learned some of his techniques from
the literary movements of the early twentieth century.
We can now see him not only as a unique, isolated indi-
vidual poet, but also as a vital participant in the
shaping of contemporary poetic theories and practices.

In his Revolution pf the Word: A New Gathering

 

 

 

pf American Avant Garde Poetry, Jerome Rothenberg includes

 

cummings as "a major innovator in the use of typography,
both as a notational device & as a basis for new visual
forms, somewhere along the road to concrete poetry."l
Mary Ellen Solt, in her "Introduction" to the anthology

Concrete Poetry: A World View, traces the methodology

 

 

of the Brazilian Noigandres group of concrete poets
directly to cummings:
The actual method of the Noigandres poets derives

from the CANTOS of Ezra Pound ("ideogrammic method");
James Joyce's ULYSSES and FINNEGAN'S WAKE

 

177

("word-ideogram; organic interpenetration of time
and space"); and the experimental poems of e. e.
cummings ("atomization of words, physiognomical
typography; expressionist emphasis on space").2

Both Solt and Rothenberg trace contemporary visual exper-
iments in poetic construction through cummings to Pound
and his Imagist/Vorticist movements. However, their dis-
cussion of the relationship of cummings to Pound and the
concrete poets is brief. Rothenberg includes the well-
known cummings poem "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r" in his

anthology, a visual depiction of a leaping grasshopper:

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):1
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;

The poet sees a grasshopper in the grass. As the poet
watches the insect and the reader watches the letters on

the page, the parts of the insect "up now gather" for a

linguistic and actual "l

eA!p" after which the legs and

letters "rearrangingly arrive," finally sorting them-

selves into a pattern which we recognize as a

178

"grasshopper." Cummings has presented a word picture
of an event and a perceptual process.

In a 1937 letter to Charles Pearce, editor at
Harcourt, Brace, cummings discussed the "format" of a
book of poems the publisher was printing: "what i care

infinitely is that each ppempicture should remain intact.

 

Why? Possibly because, with a few exceptions, my poems

are essentially pictures" (MM, 197).

Cummings thought of himself as "an author of
pictures, a draughtsman of words" (MM, 4). He continued
to paint throughout his life even though no one paid any
attention to his painting, as he wrote in a 1959 letter

to his daughter:

i know how you feel about having nearly nobody

read your book,since . . . almost nobody has ever
shown the slightest interest in my drawing & paint-
ing. . . . But if our nonhero has been not really
impatient for GOSome years,perhaps you can keep
relatively calm for(say)10 or 15? Anyhow:from my
standpoint the only thing--if you're any sort of
artist-~is to work a little harder than you can

at being who you are: while if you're an unartist

. . . nothing but big&quick recognition matters.

(1:22:22. 263)

His painting is similar to his poetry in the elimination
of all unnecessary lines, attempting to achieve the
strongest effect with the most precise and economical

technique.

179

As "a draughtsman of words" cummings continued
to create poem-pictures until his death, as poem #61

from 1; poems demonstrates:

one
t
hi
3
snowflake
(a

li

ght

in

9)

is upon a gra
v

es

t

one

(13 poems, #61)

Put into verbal terms instead of the visual phenomenon
as it is written, the poem celebrates the beauty of a
single snowflake alighting upon a gravestone: "one/
this snowflake (alighting) is upon a gravestone." Cum-
mings indicates his feelings about the event in the way

he divides words and places them on the page. He

apparently saw a natural pattern, a symmetrical motion,
in the snowflake's slow descent, since he chose to

arrange the letters of the words in symmetrical stanzas,

180

in lines of symmetrical numbers of letters, and since

he arranged the poem in a long, thin shape indicating
the vertical path of a snowflake falling through space.
The word "alighting" forms the middle stanza and is
arranged to give the spiralling effect of a falling
snowflake; in following the letters we trace the pattern
a spiralling snowflake would make as it fell.

The experience is essentially a nonverbal one,
which cummings indicates by breaking words into mainly
unpronouncable (and at first glance consciously unrecog-
nizable) letter combinations. But the organization of
the poem asks its readers to meditate with cummings the
implications of our ability to perceive this common
experience. Maslow tells us that one of the attributes
of a person in the midst of a peak experience is that:
"Perception becomes more object-centered than ego-centered.
The perceptual experience can be more organized around
the object itself as a centering point rather than being
based upon the selfish ego. . . . Objects and people are
more readily perceived as having independent reality of
their own" (AXAEE, 62).

The fact that cummings has written a poem cele-

brating his experience of watching a snowflake settle to

earth tells us that the poet has described what for him

was a "peak experience" in the sense of Maslow's fifth

181

quality: "The peak-experience is felt as a self-validat-
ing, self-justifying moment which carries its own intrin-
sic value with it" (Maslow, AXAAE, 62). As we watch the
snowflake settle to the gravestone we may meditate with
cummings on the beauty of something as small as a snow-
flake and gain through the poem a sense of the infinite
possibilities for seeing the beauty of the natural world
around us.

Poem 61 begins and ends with the word "one"; and
its subject is a single, individual snowflake. Thus the
poem celebrates individuality, the importance of the
unique organism or object, the importance of our being
open to perceive the individuality of all people and
things. Such a sense of individuality is an important
part of Maslow's definition of a self—actualizing person
and is central to the peak-experience. "Hi” expresses
discovery--the poet's discovery of a unique, exciting
event and the reader's discovery of that same event
through the medium of visual poetry. "A light in[side]"
gives a second level of meaning to the visual fact of a
settling snowflake--in Confucius' words, "everything has
its beauty but not everyone sees it." For cummings, the
perception of a falling snowflake i a_positive, ygs

experience which can be captured in poetry. Finally

through contemplation of a single snowflake we share with

cummings his sense of the beauty of our natural world,

182

his reverence for the individual thing, person or exper-
ience, and the wonder/mystery of our ability to perceive
that fascinating world of individual things--of our
ability to BE one of those individual persons for a
while.

In both the grasshopper and the snowflake poems
the form grows out of the meaning; the form of the poem
i§_the content. In singling out cummings as one of the
poets who "laid the foundation stones" of the American
and Brazilian concrete poetry movements, Mary Ellen Solt
points to the central tenet of "all definitions of con-
crete poetry": "form = content/content = form" (p. 13).
Most concrete poets distinguish between cummings' use of
language to interpret "exterior objects and/or more or
less subjective feelings" from their own aim of simply
creating a "nonverbal communication" which “communicates
its own structure." But cummings is still seen as the
purest American practitioner of concrete poetry, and his
experiments led directly to the movement's present aes-
thetic theories. Solt lists several other American poets
who include concrete poetic techniques in their repertoire
of technical tools: Walt Whitman's ”long catalogues,"

Gertrude Stein's "rose," Charles Olson's concept of

Projective Verse, Robert Creeley's "ideogram," plus

183

several poems by Louis Zukovsky, Louise Bogan and a
dozen young (unknown) poets.

Jerome Rothenberg, himself the author of fourteen
books of poetry, describes a second line of influence
from cummings to contemporary writers. While the con-
crete poets look to cummings for his linguistic rendering
of visual (nonverbal) experiences in nonverbal poetic
forms, Rothenberg notes that cummings' use of oral
rhythms has also influenced later poets:

His insistence on lower-case & innovative punctu-
ation (devices now in common use by poets & others)
was a signal that writing, far from being the
normative state of language, is itself derived

from speech. While the wide appeal of his modernism
has often brought scorn from guardians—of—letters,

he has remained a bridge to resources & possibilities
for many later poets.

(Revolution, 6)

 

Rothenberg does not specify which poets were directly
influenced by cummings in the ways he outlines. However,
Charles Olson appears in the list of both concrete poets
and Rothenberg's anthology of American Avant Garde poets.
In his essay on Projective verse Olson specifically
designates cummings as the originator of certain methods
of visually representing oral rhythms on the poetry page.
Through an examination of cummings' poem "in Just-/
spring" in the light of Olson's essay several other
direct influences of cummings on contemporary poets may

be deduced.

184

Cummings demanded that all conventional restric-
tions arbitrarily imposed on the English language be re-
examined. Punctuation, capitalization, syntax, diction,
spacing between words, line-length, arrangement of lines
on the page, rhyme, meter and stanzaic division were all
open to question and manipulation by the skillful poet.
The result is poetry which reads like a theatrical
script. It requires the reader first to stop, think
about and finally to fpgl the impact of each word.

In his 1923 poem "in Just-/spring" cummings cele-
brates life experiences by describing his childhood
impression of Norton Woods (where he grew up, near
Harvard University) in springtime. From other cummings
poems (for example #29 in l§_ppgps) we learn that "spring"
is symbolic of an awakened, open appreciation of all life
experiences, whether positive or negative. It includes
everything alive, innocent, growing, opening, living,
perceiving, engaged and feeling. "Spring" is e. e.
cummings' approach to life. In this poem's presentation
of "spring" we are given a sample of several positive

cummings' values:

185

in Just-
spring when the world is mud—
1uscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
The little/lame balloonman places us immediately
in a circus atmosphere. Cummings' sister Elizabeth has
reported that in the cummings' childhood the circus and
the balloonman both arrived every spring: "The first
and most exciting sign that spring had really come was
the balloon man. First you heard his whistle in the
distance; then he would come walking down the street,
carrying a basket full of balloons of all colors tugging

at their strings" (MM, 18). The circus, in turn, became

186

cummings' analogy for the way a poem should work: "move-
ment is the content, the subject matter, of the circus-
show, while bigness is its form: . . . here (as in all
true 'works of art') content and form are aspects of a
homogenous whole" (Misg., 113). The form of a poem is
designed to convey the content, which in any cummings
poem is his effort to recreate his attitudes, feelings
and life-view in public, poetic form. In the same
article he says: "happy is the writer who, in the
course of his lifetime, succeeds in making a dozen
persons react to his personality genuinely or vividly"
(Misg., 112). "in Just/spring" allows us to participate
in cummings' feelings about "spring." At the circus, as
in cummings' poems, the spectator/reader is continually
amazed by the ”unbelievably skillful and inexorably
beautiful and unimaginably dangerous things" which are
continually happening in the circus-tent/poem. There
should always be such an intense experience being acted
out in the tent or on the poetic stage that the spectator/
reader "feels that there is a little too much going on at
«any given moment" (Misg., 113). Thus even an apparently
simple reminiscence should and does contain a multitude
of connotative activities.

The poem begins "in Just-/spring," at the (re-)
birth of beauty and life after winter's sleep, or after

a period of introspective, emotional withdrawal from our

187

receptiveness to external stimuli. The narrator/singer
promises that "we(e)"—-poet and reader--will whistle and
dance "far” and 'for a little while'("wee") if we open
ourselves to the experience offered through the poem.
Multiple connotations are afforded "wee" through the
run-on syntax.

The diction is simple and child-like, with chil-
dren “running from.marbles and/piracies" as well as coming
"dancing/from hop—scotch and jump-rope," (creating a tone
of nursery rhyme innocence). The lack of punctuation
and the enjambment of phrase after phrase gives the poem
a breathless, tumbling, rushing effect reminiscent of
children at play, caught in the midst of some springtime
game ("hop-scotch“ or “jump-rope"). "Mud-luscious"
reminds us of mud pies after a rainstorm when the world
seems fresh and new and all the grownup pessimists are
inside hiding. Now we can go splashing through the
"puddle-wonderful" streets singing and whistling and
glad to be alive.

Punctuation helps to organize our perception of
this group of words; cummings revitalizes marks of
punctuation, using them in unusual ways. In hyphenating
"Just-/spring," "mud-/luscious," "puddle-wonderful,"
"hop-scotch," "jump-rope," and "goat-footed," the poet
indicates visually that the two words should work as a

single meaning-unit; but by placing "Just-" and "spring,“

188

"mud—" and "luscious“ on separate lines he asks us to
pause vocally and mentally between the elements of these
meaning-units, to consider each word as a separate ele-
ment, then to feel the synergy of each pair of separate
elements working together. Extreme economy of expression
is achieved with this technique, since a reader will feel
compelled to re-read the lines two or three times to
savor the resultant changes in meaning.

Capitalization has been a favorite tool for cum-
mings since his earliest book of poems. Three original
uses of capitalization are evident in this poem. By
banishing the meaningless convention of automatically
capitalizing the first word in each sentence, he reno-
vates the capital letter as a symbol of deliberate
emphasis. In a cummings' poem a capital letter does
not simply flag a prOper name or some other abstract
classification of whole groups. A cummings capital
letter draws special attention to a word which may have
several meanings in the context of the poem; or the
capitalized word may receive special stress in verbal
reading of the lines. The capitalization of "Just-"
has both of these effects. Like an accent mark in
Hopkins' poems, we treat the capitalized "Just-" as a
stressed word in scanning the poem's meter. The capi-
talization also points to two levels of meaning for the

word: we are treated to a sense of spring's "just"

189

beginning to arrive, as well as to a sense of spring as
the "right” or "correct" season. A third use of capi-
talization is to change the meaning of a repeated word,
as with "balloonman" and "balloonMan." Our sense of
the person's identity is changed from the dictionary
definition ”a nameless anybody whose identity is gained
from his social function of selling balloons" to a Man,
a person representative of all mankind.

Paradoxically, the changing adjectival modifiers
of "balloonman" work the simultaneous transformation of
a "little lame" and "queer old" man selling balloons into
the final apparition of a "goat—footed" Pan, the ancient
Greek god of woods, shepherds and music. The whole pro-
cession, including "we(e)" and "bettyandisbel," goes
dancing off through poetry behind Pan-cummings, the poet
of life and "spring."

Cummings has been credited by Charles Olson as
the pioneer in the contemporary use of the "space" symbol.
We all take for granted the standard system of arranging
letters into words, but cummings examined the significance
of spacing between letters (about half the amount of
space a typed "i" takes up on the typewritten page).
we expect to see unvarying, larger spaces between words
(the width of a typed "w"), full two-letter spaces
between sentences and the five-letter indentation of

each new paragraph. Cummings revises these conventions,

190

using the blank spaces on a page in the same meticulous
way he uses the marks of punctuation--to intensify the
effects of his poems.
~The spacing techniques used by cummings in "in

Just/-spring" are similar to those described by Charles
Olson in his essay "Projective verse.” Olson suggested
that spacing be used in poems to indicate the "correct"
oral reading of each poem. He hailed the typewriter as
a revolutionizing element in poetic composition: "Due
to its rigidity and its space precisions, it can, for
the poet, indicate exactly the breath, the pauses, the
suspension even of syllable, the juxtapositions even of
parts of phrases, which he intends."3 The poem "in
Just-/spring" reads very satisfactorily if we follow
Olson's prescription for reading the cues of line-length
and spacing between words:

If a contemporary poet leaves a space as long as

the phrase before it, he means that space to be

held, by the breath, an equal length of time.

If he suspends a word or syllable at the end of a

line (this was most cummings' addition) he means

that time to pass that it takes the eye--that hair
of time suspended--to pick up the next line.

 

(italics mine)

 

£2 Just-/Spring is an example of the type of
vocal script-writing Olson describes. The space between
spring and when in line two is eight spaces long; thus

there should be a pause between the two words, a pause

191

lasting as long as it takes to say spring. The pauses
between whistle . . . fag . . . 229.222 in line 5 should
be about the length of time it takes to say the word £35,
since the spaces between the words are both three type-
writer-spaces. The reader is asked to take his breaths
either before or after the one-line stanzas in lines 5,
10, 15 and 20. The vocal pause is greatest between the
stanzas, distinct between the lines within each stanza,
less noticeable between widely spaced words, smaller yet
between words like app/2A3 in lines 18-19, slight between
words of normal spacing, almost nonexistent between
hyphenated words (unless the parts are separated by a
line division), and the words are run together when

there is no space between them (i.e. eddieandbill instead

 

of "eddie and bill," bettyandisbel instead of "betty and

 

isbel"). Caedmon records has issued a recording which
*was made when cummings read this poem in his "nonlecture
two“ at Harvard in 1952 (Caedmon record #TC 1187). His
reading demonstrates the methodology Olson describes.
Olson wishes tobring his ideas to the status of
a new "convention": "It is time we picked the fruits of
'the experiments of cummings, Pound, Williams, each of
‘dhom has, after his way, already used the machine as a
scoring to his own composing, as a script to its vocali-
zation. It is now only a matter of the recognition of

the conventions of composition by field for us to bring

192

into being an open verse as formal as the closed, with
all its traditional advantages." Many contemporary poets
have either adopted or adapted "cummings' addition'--
visual clues to verbal performance of the poem--into
their own work. Robert Creeley may be the poet who has
worked most extensively with the techniques of "compo-
sition by field" in recent years, but comparison of the
printed poems with recorded readings by poets as diverse
as Robert Duncan, Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, Allen
Ginsberg and Ted Hughes can give some indication of the
extent to which cummings' experiment has become a
standard tool in the poetic craftsman's trade.

In conclusion, whether or not one accepts my
conception of e. e. cummings as a fully self-actualizing
person in terms of Maslow's "psychology of being," we
can certainly see that to participate in ZE.ESEE§I and
indeed in all of cummings' poetry, is to engage in poetic
experiences which imitate or synthesize "peak experiences."
Cummings' poetry leads us toward exciting, healthy
experiences, teaching us to enjoy and appreciate the
wonder of life, the mystery of death and the beauty of
love. We can participate in a healthy anger at the
in-human-ness of our twentieth century "scientific"
world. We can love with him some of the world's indi—
viduals and laugh or cry with him at many of the

unworld's nonpeople.

193

Cummings presents a way of looking at the world
which is unifying rather than fragmenting, transcendent
rather than devisive or limiting. Cummings has been
joined by Robert Pirsig, Loren Eisley, Diane Wakoski,
Denise Levertov, Robert Bly, Richard Wilbur, Nikki
Giovanni, Alice Walker and other contemporary poets in
celebrating the joy of living, believing in the possi-
bility of human relationships and presenting a positive
world-vision which is sorely needed today.

With cummings we may discover "love" and "yes"
attitudes within ourselves as well as in the external
world.

love is a place

& through this place of
love move

(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world

& through this world of
yes live

(skilfully coiled)
all worlds

(N__O_ITHANKS, #58)

The craftsmanship of this poem and of most of the other

poems cummings has written is admirable; craftsmanship

combined with a positive affirmation of life makes most

of cummings' poems examples or demonstrations of "self-

transcendence." Cummings' description of other poets'
n

work he loved holds true for his own work: . . .

Every human being is in and of himself or herself

194

illimitable; but the essence of his or of her illimita-
bility is precisely its uniqueness-~nor could all poetry
(past present and future) begin to indicate the varieties
of selfhood; and consequently of selftranscendence"

(i6n, 82).

CHAPTER VIII--NOTES

lJerome Rothenberg, ed., Revolution of the World:
A New Gathering g£_Avant Garde Poetgy, l914-I945 (New
York: The Seabury Press, 1974), p. 5.

 

 

 

2Mary Ellen Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry: A World

View (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 13.

 

3Charles Olson, "Projective Verse," Poetry New
York, No. 3 (1950), rpt. in New American Poet , ed.
Donald M. Allen (New York: Group Press, I965), p. 39.

 

 

195

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

B-VALUES AS DESCRIPTIONS OF PERCEPTION
IN PEAK EXPERIENCES
Excerpted from Abraham Maslow,

Religions, Values, and Peak-
ExperIences (pp. 91-95)

 

The described characteristics of Being are also
the values of Being. These Being-values are perceived
as ultimate and as further unanalyzable (and yet they can
each be defined in terms of each and all of the others).
They are paralleled also by the characteristics of self-
hood (identity) in peak-experiences; the characteristics
of ideal art; the characteristics of ideal mathematical
demonstrations; of ideal experiments and theories; of
ideal science and knowledge; the far goals of all ideal,
uncovering (Taoistic, noninterfering) psychotherapies;
the far goals of the ideal humanistic education; the far
goals and the expression of some kinds of religion; the
characteristics of the ideally good environment and of
the ideally good society.

The following may be seen either as a list of the

described attributes of reality when perceived in

196

197

peak-experiences, pp as a list of the irreducible,

intrinsic values of this reality.

1. Truth: honesty; reality; (nakedness; simplicity;
richness; essentiality; oughtness; beauty; pure;
clean and unadulterated completeness).

2. Goodness: (rightness; desirability; oughtness;
justice; benevolence; honesty); (we love it, are
attracted to it, approve of it).

3. Beauty: (rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity;
richness; wholeness; perfection; completion;
uniqueness; honesty).

4. Wholeness: (unity; integration; tendency to
oneness; interconnectedness; simplicity; organi—
zation; structure; order; not dissociated;
synergy; homonomous and integrative tendencies).

4a. Dichotomy-transcendence: (acceptance, resolution,
integration, or transcendence of dichotomies,
polarities, opposites, contradictions); synergy
(i.e. transformation of Oppositions into unities,
of antagonists into collaborating or mutually
enhancing partners).

5. Aliveness: (process; not-deadness; dynamic;
eternal; flowing; self-perpetuating; spontaneity;
self-moving energy; self-forming; self-regulation;
full-functioning; changing and yet remaining the
same; expressing itself; never-ending).

6. Uniqueness: (idiosyncrasy; individuality; singu-
larity; non-comparability; its defining-character-
istics; novelty; quale; suchness; nothing else
like it).

7. Perfection: (nothing superfluous; nothing lacking;
everything in its right place; unimprovable, just-
rightness; just-so-ness suitability; justice;
completeness; nothing beyond; oughtness.

7a. Necessity: (inevitability; it must be 'ust
that way; not changed in any slightest way; and
it is good that it is that way).

 

198

8. Completion: (ending; finality; justice; it's
finished; no more changing of the Gestalt; ful-
fillment; finis; and telos; nothing missing or
lacking; totaIity; fuIIIIIment of destiny;
cessation; climax, consummation; closure; death
before rebirth; cessation and completion of growth
and development; total gratification with no more
gratification possible; no striving; no movement
toward any goal because already there; not pointing
to anything beyond itself).

9. Justice: (fairness; oughtness; suitability;
architectonic quality; necessity; inevitability;
disinterested-ness; non-partiality).

9a. Order: (lawfulness; rightness; rhythm; regularity;
symmetry; structure; nothing superfluous; per-
fectly arranged).

10. Simplicity: (honesty; nakedness; purity; essen-
tiality; succinctness; [mathematical] elegance;
abstract; unmistakability; essential skeletal
structure; the heart of the matter; bluntness;
only that which is necessary; without ornament,
nothing extra or superfluous).

ll. Richness: (totality; differentiation; complexity;
intricacy: nothing missing or hidden; all there;
"non-importance," i.e., everything is equally
important; nothing is unimportant; everything left
the way it is, without improving, simplifying,
abstracting, rearranging; comprehensiveness).

12. Effortlessness: -(ease: lack of strain, striving,
or difficulty; grace, perfect and beautiful
functioning).

l3. Playfulness: (fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor;
exuberance; effortlessness).

l4. Self-sufficiency: (autonomy; independence; not
needing anything other than itself in order to be
itself; self-determining; environment-transcen-
dence; separateness; living by its own laws;
identity).
The descriptive B-values, seen as aspects of
reality, should be distinguished from the attitudes or

emotions of the B-cognizer toward this cognized reality

199

and it attributes, e.g. awe, love, adoration, worship,
humility, feeling of smallness plus godlikeness, rever-
ence, approval of, agreement with wonder, sense of mystery,
gratitude, devotion, dedication, identification with,
belonging to, fusion with, surprise and incredulousness,
fear, joy, rapture, bliss, ecstasy, etc.

Of course, these "ultimate truths," if they are
confirmed, are still truths within a system. That is,

they seem to be true for the human species. That is,

 

in the same sense that Euclidian theorems are absolutely

true within the Euclidian system. Again, just as

 

Euclidian prOpositions are ultimately tautologous, so
also the B-values may very well turn out to be defining
characteristics of humanness in its essence, i.e., sips
gpg.pgp_aspects of the concept "human," and, therefore,
tautologous. The statement, "The fully human person in
certain moments perceives the unity of the cosmos, fuses
with it, and rests in it, completely satisfied for the
moment in his yearning for one-ness," is very likely
synonymous, at a "higher level of magnification,” with

the statement, "This is a fully human person."

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bate, Walter Jackson. "Negative Capability." Keats.
Twentieth Centu Views, ed. W. J. Bates.
EnglewoSdCliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964,
pp. 51-68.

 

 

Baum, S. V., ed. A, E, Cummings and the Critics. East
Lansing, M1Ch.: Michigan State University Press,
1962.

 

Bernardin, Charles W. ”John Dos Passos' Harvard Years."
An Anthology of Poetry. New England Quarterly, 27
(March 1954).

 

Bloom, Edward A., Charles H. Philbrick, and Elmer M.
Blistern. The Order pf Poetgy. New York:
Odyssey Press, 1961:-

Coffman, Stanley K., Jr. Imagism: A Chapter for the
Histo pf Modern Poet . Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, I95I.

Cowley, Malcolm. "One Man Alone." A Second Flowering.
New York: Viking Press, 1973.

Cummings, Edward Estlin. [no title]. New York: Covici
Friede Publishers, 1930. lst ed. signed by
Cummings, in Special Collections Library,
Michigan State University.

. A Miscellan . Ed. George J. Firmage. New
York: T e Argophile Press, 1958. Copy
signed by Cummings, in Special Collections
Library, Michigan State University.

 

. Anthropos: The Future of Art. Mount Vernon,
N.Y.: The Golden EagIePrۤs7_I944. Copy signed
by Cummings, in Special Collections at Michigan
State University Library.

 

 

 

200

201

Cummings, Edward Estlin. CIOPW. New York: Covici-
Friede Publishers, 1930. C0py signed by Cummings,
in Special Collections at Michigan State University
Library.

. Complete Poems 1913-1962. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

 

. E. E. Cummin s: A Miscellany Revised. Ed.
George J. Firmage. New York: October House,
1965.

 

. Him. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927.

 

. ‘E, six nonlectures. Harvard University Press,
1953; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1965, fourth print-
ing.

 

 

. Poems 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World? 1954.

 

. EE_poems. New York: Harbrace Paperbound
Library, Harcourt Brace Janovich, Inc., 1958.

 

 

. Santa Claus: A Moralit . New York: Henry
Holt and Company,_l§46.

. Selectpg Letters of E. E. Cummings. Ed. F. W.
Dupee and George StadE. New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1969.

 

 

. ‘ZE poems. New York: H brace Paperbound
Library, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963.

. The Enormous Room. New York: Liveright
PaperBound Edition, Liveright, 1970.

. Three Plays and E_Ballet. Ed. George J.
Firmage. New York: OctoEer House, 1967.

"Three Poems." The Little Review, 9, No. 3

Deutsch, Babette. "e e cummingsesq." The Nation, 152
(May 17, 1941), 59.

 

 

Dumas, Bethany K. E. E. Cummin s: A Remembrance pg
Miracles. New YorE: Barnes & Noble, 1974.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selections from Ralph Waldo Emer-
son. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1960.

 

202

Encyclopedia 2: Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Alex Preminger.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Fairley, Irene R. E. E. Cummin s and Ungrammar. Scar-
ington, N.Y.: WatermiII PGBIishers, 1976.

Firmage, George J. E. E. Cummings: A Bibliography.
Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
1960.

 

Ford, Ford Maddox (Hueffer). "On Impressionism." Poetry
and Drama, 2, No. 2 (June 1914), 175-81.

Friedman, Norman, ed. E. E. Cummin s: A Collection of
Critical Essa s. Twentieth Century Views SeriEs.
Englewood CIi¥fs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

 

. g. e. cummings: The Growth of a Writer.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois fifiiVersity Press,
1964.

. g. g. cummings: the art g; his ppetry.
Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1960.

 

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy 9; Criticism: Four Essa s.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.

Hampden-Turner, Charles. Radical Man: The Process 2:
Psycho-Social Development. Cambridge, Mass.:
Schenkman Publishing Co., 1970.

 

The Harvard Wake. No. 5 (Spring 1946). (A special
cummings number.)

Horton, Philip, and Sherry Mangen. "Two Views of Cum-
mings." Partisan Review, 4 (May 1938), 58-63.

Hulme, T. E. Speculations. New York: Boni & Liveright,
1924.

Jerome, Judson. Poetry: Premeditated Art. Boston,
Mass.: Houghton-MiffIin, I968.

Keats, John. Selected Poetry and Letters. Ed. Richard

H. Fogle. New York: HOIt, Rinehart and Winston,
1951.

Lane, Gary. E Ag: A Stud g£_E. E. Cummings' Poems.
Lawrence: UniverSity of Kansas Press, 1976.

Levertov, Denise. The Poet in the World. New York: New
Directions, 1973.

 

203

Lindroth, Colette and James R. The Poetry of E. E. Cum-
mings. New York: MonarCh Notes Sefies, Simon &
Schuster, 1966.

 

Marks, Barry A. E. E. Cummings, Twayne' 5 United States
Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1964.

Maslow, Abraham. "A Theory of Human Motivation." Psy-
chological Review, 50 (1943), 370-96.

 

. Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. New
York: The Viking Press, 1964.

 

 

 

. Toward 2 Psychology of Bein . 2nd ed. New
York: Van Nostrand Reihho d, 968.

Maurer, Robert E. "Latter-Day Notes on E. E. Cummings'
Language." Bucknell Review, 5 (May 1955), 1-23.

 

Norman, Charles. The Magic Maker: E. E. Cummings.
New York: The Macmillan Company, .

 

Olson, Charles. "Projective Verse." Poetry New York,
no. 3 (1950), rpt. New American Poetry, Ed: Donald
Allen. New York: Grove Press, .

 

 

 

 

 

The Oxford University Dictionary on Historical Principles.
Ed. C. T. Onions. 3rd ed. Oxford: ’iThe Clarendon
Press, 1955.

Pater, Walter. "Plato and Platonism." English Prose gr
the Victorian Era. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1938.

 

 

. "Preface" to Studies in the History of the
Renaissance (1873), rp ._in_THe Norton Kfithaiogy
of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1962. Vol. 2.

 

 

 

Pound, Ezra. ABC gr Reading. New York: New Directions,
1934.

 

 

. The Literary Essa s of Ezra Pound. New York:
New Directions, 1968.

'1 Selected Letters pg Ezra Pound, 1907-1941.
Ed. D. D. Paige. New York: New Directian, 1971.

 

 

 

and Marcella Span, eds. Confucious E2 Cummings:
Ag Anthology of Poetry. New York: New Directions,
54*

 

 

204

Pratt, William. "Introduction." Mbdern PoetryrnDMin—
iature: The Imagist Poem. New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1963.

 

 

Rothenberg, Jerome, ed. Revolution of the Word: A New

Gathering pr_Avant Gafde PerEy, IQIZ-I945.
New York: The Seabury Press, 1974.

 

 

Solt, Mary Ellen, ed. Concrete Poetry: A WOrld View.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968,
1970.

 

 

 

Spears, Monroe. Dionysus and the Cit : Modernism En
Twentieth Century Poetry. Oxiord: Oxford Uni-
,versity Press, 1970.

 

Triem, Eve. E. E. Cummings. University of Minnesota
PamphIets on American Writers, no. 87. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969.

Wagner, Linda Welshimer. Denise Levertov. New York:
Twayne, 1967.

 

. Hemingway and Faulkner: inventors/masters.
Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1975.

 

 

. The Poems gr William Carlos Williams: .A
CritiEal Study. MiddIetown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1964.

 

 

 

Wegner, Robert E. The Poetry and Prose of E. E. Cummings.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & WorId, 1965.

 

Wheeler, Charles B. The Desi n of Poetry.» New York:
W. W. Norton, I966. _—

Wickes, George. Americans rn_Paris. New York: Double-
day and Co., I969.

 

 

Wilson, Edmund. The Shores of Light. New York: Farrar,
Straus, & Young, 1952?

 

 

Winters, Yvor. "Merely a Penumbra.“ American Literature,
10 (January 1939).

 

Zillman, Lawrence J. The Art and Craft of Poetry. New
York: The Macmillan Company, I967.