Edward Estlin Cummings, Modernist Master

EDWARD ESTLIN CUMMINGS, MODERNIST MASTER

Edward Estlin Cummings, or “e. e. cummings,” all lower-case letters, as his name was often printed in his published works, introduced his highly innovative poetry at the beginning of the last century, the influence of which extends to the present day. He spectacularly broke free of nineteenth-century conventions of poetic form, experimenting with grammar, syntax, diction, meaning, and particularly the visual arrangement of words on the page, effectively engaging and often delighting the reader, and successfully creating his own unique, instantly recognizable voice. Cummings was a revolutionary in the best sense of the word. Nearly half a century after his demise, his cleverly inventive poetry endures, and it is especially popular among the young.

Cummings was an easy choice for selection for this second list of ten greatest poets. He was groundbreaking, a pioneer, and outstanding for his time. Moreover, he is continuously influential and universally (practically) considered worthy of inclusion in the American canon.

One of the luminaries of avant-garde poetry, Cummings may be celebrated as a Modernist Master, similar to, for example, visual artists like Matisse, Picasso, Dali, or Kandinsky. Their counterparts in poetry would include, for instance, Guillaume Apollinaire, T. S. Eliot, or Wallace Stevens.

 
Cummings burst onto the stage of postwar America with the publication in 1922 of his autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, and in 1923 of his first collection of poems, Tulips and Chimneys. The latter includes Modernist masterpieces like “All in green went my love riding,” “in Just-,” and “Buffalo Bill’s,” memorable pieces that have weathered the vagaries of literary taste.

Cummings’ poetic debut displays the stylistic attributes that had made his work so radical and distinctive at the time: unconventional arrangement of elements on the page; unusual word combinations giving rise to his own idiosyncratic lexicon; whimsical repudiation of grammatical rules and linguistic conventions, especially those concerning syntax and punctuation. Overall, his poetry comes across as engaging, accessible, and—surprise, surprise—coherent, sometimes wry, often pleasing, curious, and provocative. Poet Randall Jarrell has said, “No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to the general and the special reader.”

Cummings’ poetry belongs to the avant-garde movement, the literary aspect of which can be traced back to nineteenth-century Realism in Europe, which segued into Naturalism, and, in poetry, to Symbolism. Realism in Europe is exemplified by the fiction of George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert, while Naturalism is typified by the short stories and novels of Guy de Maupassant. Symbolism is illustrated by the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.

Cummings was influenced by, among others, Gertrude Stein’s experiments with syntax and Amy Lowell’s Imagist poetry. Stein and Lowell are American avant-garde poets.

Critics have remarked on the likely influence on Cummings of Guillaume Apollinaire’s Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War 1913-1916, a book of visual poetry. Apollinaire belongs to the French avant-garde.

Although Cummings may not have been wholly original, he was most certainly an original. Debts to his aesthetic antecedents notwithstanding, his voice and style are unmistakably his own. His audacious linguistic gymnastics and tonal range, varying from the expansively lyrical to the sharply satiric, created the eccentric poetic persona we know today as “e. e. cummings.” Use of all lower-case letters, by the way, is a publisher’s penchant popularized in the sixties.

Cummings dwelt upon traditional subjects—nature, for example, coming-of-age, and, especially, romantic love. He was a lyricist who wrote about his inner life and emotions, and his individualistic response to the world, reveling in fully using his considerable powers of imagination. In the foregoing respects he is connected to nineteenth-century Romanticism. 

He also wrote political poetry and social commentary (poems), where we discover his aptitude for satire. Examples include “next to of course god america i,” “i sing of Olaf glad and big,” and, as a type of social commentary, “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”

His total artistic output encompasses about 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, several essays, and hundreds of paintings and drawings.

One of Cummings’ most memorable poems, “in Just-,” I came across in high school, and I suspect it is widely featured in secondary school textbooks. 

in Just-

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious 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

This poem was originally published in Tulips and Chimneys (1923).

See: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47247/in-just

This classic poem has been analyzed to the point that its many embedded meanings have been extracted and thoroughly discussed. So I would only point out some features of the poem that make it especially striking to me. They include: use of variable horizontal and vertical spacing to alter the speed by which the text is read, creating the effect of breathlessness (“eddieandbill”) or, alternately, that of a distantly penetrating whistle (“far and wee”); lexical inventions like “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful,” wherein the peculiar form of the word heightens its particular meaning; and the queer, enigmatic figure of the “goat-footed” “old balloonman,” ostensibly the Greek god Pan. His presence in the poem intrigues.

This playful poem, “61” (it is the 61st poem in a book of 73), succeeds in visually arranging typographic elements in order to reproduce the effect of a snowflake lightly falling on a gravestone.

61

one

t

hi

s

snowflake

(a

  li

    ght

  in

g)

is upon a gra

v

es

t

one

This poem was originally published in 73 Poems (1962).

See: https://harvardmagazine.com/2005/03/the-rebellion-of-ee-cumm.html

Cummings has been celebrated—justly—for his delightfully original love poems. Here is one.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

This poem was originally published in ViVa (1931).

See: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond

The entire poem is a series of metaphors rushing forward, every line in the poem, novel, original, and compelling, without a trace of dullness—“your eyes have their silence,” “your slightest look easily will unclose me,” “nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility.” The closing metaphor is probably the most powerful of the bunch: “nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands.”

Edward Estlin Cummings, 1917 photo (cropped)