e. e. cummings

The rap against e. e. cummings that he was formally inventive but not philosophically challenging is, I think, a fair one. His typographical techniques and formal innovations are entertaining, but not often insightful. He has a way of expressing positions we've always felt, but is less able to draw out new feelings or sufficiently complicate our positions. Here's a poem I've always enjoyed:

IN)
all those who got
athlete's mouth jumping
on&off bandwaggons
(MEMORIAM

The substitution of mouth for foot is nice, especially because it plays on the phrase "putting one's foot in one's mouth," but it simply reaffirms a commonplace position. There doesn't seem to be enough at stake to make this a poem of the first order.

When he does write something that draws out new insights, the process is too often disrupted by his formal innovations rather than supported by them. For example, poem VII from section two of "Is 5" is a good poem because the diction and lack of punctuation creates a productive tension between the serious subject matter and the mind that can't stop itself from running through it:

you know what i mean when
the first guy drops you know
everybody feels sick or
when they throw in a few gas
and the oh baby shrapnel
or my feet getting dim freezing or
up to your you know what in water or
with the bugs crawling right all up
all everywhere over you all me everyone

The terror is made more stark by the poetic speaker's recognition that the events don't need poetic diction to elevate their importance. The poem is a mad dash through a deadly environment. But I have yet to understand why the poem starts with:

lis
-ten

and ends with:

to
no

This doesn't seem to support the organic form of the poem and is more about cummings's whimsy than it is about careful construction. It is the benevolent distribution of this misplaced formal whimsy that makes me wish cummings had perhaps written less and treated with more care his choice of poetic subjects.