death(having lost)put on his universe |
| and yawned:it looks like rain |
| (they've played for timelessness |
| with chips of when) |
| that's yours;i guess |
| you'll have to loan me pain |
| to take the hearse, |
| see you again. |
| Love(having found)wound up such pretty toys |
| as themselves could not know: |
| the earth tinily whirls; |
| while daisies grow |
| (and boys and girls |
| have whispered thus and so) |
| and girls with boys |
| to bed will go, |
§
Before I come over all biographical, let me urge you (if you have not done so already) to read Cummings aloud, whenever you find him, at least three times. It takes trial and openness to find the rhythm of you and him.
'Before' is over. Edward Estlin Cummings completes my current triad of preachers' progeny. This is privately peculiar, as my sweetest memory of Cummings' words involves having them read to me, not in a lecture hall or seminar and not by the son of a preacher man or woman. Ansel Adams' photographs are strong because of contrast. They do not teach me to shy away from the stuff. With that forewarning, onward.
Cummings was born on the 14th of October, 1894. His father (also an Edward, but not an Estlin) was a professor who became a (conservative in outlook; when considering the son, this aspect of the father must not be overlooked) clergyman. He taught sociology and political science at Harvard. At the turn of the 20th century, he became an ordained Unitarian minister. If Cummings' father was verbally fluent, then his mother had words in her blood, as well, being related to writers. (This doesn't always work. Trust me.)
Cummings' parents called their son Estlin, to distinguish him from his father. It's difficult to imagine 'Junior' being bellowed in that household.
Carrying on the theme of prodigies, Cummings was drawing by the age of four. Taking a shortcut to later in his life, there not being much to say about most literary four-year-olds, E. E. Cummings went to Harvard (where he studied classics -- think Greek -- and joined a circle of artists -- think in many media) and then followed what might appear a traditional writerly migratory path first to New York City and then to France.
The path was less (by artistic standards) ordinary than it might seem. While Cummings and his father disagreed on many points, both were against the war. Cummings lasted in New York only a few months. He worked writing business letters. Imagine the punctuation he suppressed. Eager to avoid conscription, Cummings joined Harjes-Norton American Ambulance Corps. That's what took him to France.
Consider the shocks to his imaginative system: that place, that time, that age and those propensities. It is no wonder that his framing of words seems, to many of us, askew, even as it is potent and therefore appealing. Chiaroscuro again: Horror can spawn strong beauty. Consider the works of, say, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, both the artistic sons of war.
(Backing up a bit: The gnarliness of bureaucracy -- forgive me -- militated to Cummings' advantage in that he had a month of freedom, before wiring himself to the ambulance, in which to fall in love with Paris. All was not ill and darkness.)
When a friend of his came under suspicion for writing letters the censors didn't like, Cummings stood by his friend, and both of them landed in prison in La Ferté Macé. Any adolescent can resonate to this matter of getting in trouble with a friend. This unity belongs to many humans. It doesn't always land you in an interrogation room in jail, but the front room of the parental units can be a scary place.
Cummings' father -- note here the family skill with words (Sometimes, the breeding is true.) -- wrote to President Wilson. Cummings was freed. He was then conscripted. Fortune favoured that son, in that the war ended a few months later.
Cummings was married more than once, but his relationship with Greenwich Village was solid. He moved to the Village in 1923 and there he stayed. After his first marriage (to Elaine Orr, ex-wife of Cummings' friend Scholfield Thayer) ended, he held himself together with prayer, work and women. See Tulips and Chimneys, 1923. That marriage produced Cummings' a daughter, Nancy, Cummings' only child. For those who've never visited the Village, it may be comforting to know that passages are unchanged. You can still walk there and sense Cummings' footsteps drift-pacing yours.
Greenwich Village makes, to me, simple sense as a choice for Cummings' base. Many religions -- although not the one Cummings' father preached -- celebrate spirit and flesh, and that aesthetic could be supported in that place. The dual delight is plain in these of Cummings' words:
'Before' is over. Edward Estlin Cummings completes my current triad of preachers' progeny. This is privately peculiar, as my sweetest memory of Cummings' words involves having them read to me, not in a lecture hall or seminar and not by the son of a preacher man or woman. Ansel Adams' photographs are strong because of contrast. They do not teach me to shy away from the stuff. With that forewarning, onward.
Cummings was born on the 14th of October, 1894. His father (also an Edward, but not an Estlin) was a professor who became a (conservative in outlook; when considering the son, this aspect of the father must not be overlooked) clergyman. He taught sociology and political science at Harvard. At the turn of the 20th century, he became an ordained Unitarian minister. If Cummings' father was verbally fluent, then his mother had words in her blood, as well, being related to writers. (This doesn't always work. Trust me.)
Cummings' parents called their son Estlin, to distinguish him from his father. It's difficult to imagine 'Junior' being bellowed in that household.
Carrying on the theme of prodigies, Cummings was drawing by the age of four. Taking a shortcut to later in his life, there not being much to say about most literary four-year-olds, E. E. Cummings went to Harvard (where he studied classics -- think Greek -- and joined a circle of artists -- think in many media) and then followed what might appear a traditional writerly migratory path first to New York City and then to France.
The path was less (by artistic standards) ordinary than it might seem. While Cummings and his father disagreed on many points, both were against the war. Cummings lasted in New York only a few months. He worked writing business letters. Imagine the punctuation he suppressed. Eager to avoid conscription, Cummings joined Harjes-Norton American Ambulance Corps. That's what took him to France.
Consider the shocks to his imaginative system: that place, that time, that age and those propensities. It is no wonder that his framing of words seems, to many of us, askew, even as it is potent and therefore appealing. Chiaroscuro again: Horror can spawn strong beauty. Consider the works of, say, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, both the artistic sons of war.
(Backing up a bit: The gnarliness of bureaucracy -- forgive me -- militated to Cummings' advantage in that he had a month of freedom, before wiring himself to the ambulance, in which to fall in love with Paris. All was not ill and darkness.)
When a friend of his came under suspicion for writing letters the censors didn't like, Cummings stood by his friend, and both of them landed in prison in La Ferté Macé. Any adolescent can resonate to this matter of getting in trouble with a friend. This unity belongs to many humans. It doesn't always land you in an interrogation room in jail, but the front room of the parental units can be a scary place.
Cummings' father -- note here the family skill with words (Sometimes, the breeding is true.) -- wrote to President Wilson. Cummings was freed. He was then conscripted. Fortune favoured that son, in that the war ended a few months later.
Cummings was married more than once, but his relationship with Greenwich Village was solid. He moved to the Village in 1923 and there he stayed. After his first marriage (to Elaine Orr, ex-wife of Cummings' friend Scholfield Thayer) ended, he held himself together with prayer, work and women. See Tulips and Chimneys, 1923. That marriage produced Cummings' a daughter, Nancy, Cummings' only child. For those who've never visited the Village, it may be comforting to know that passages are unchanged. You can still walk there and sense Cummings' footsteps drift-pacing yours.
Greenwich Village makes, to me, simple sense as a choice for Cummings' base. Many religions -- although not the one Cummings' father preached -- celebrate spirit and flesh, and that aesthetic could be supported in that place. The dual delight is plain in these of Cummings' words:
when God lets my body be
From each eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
Their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
How many layers are in that poem? Start to peel it and you find strata within strata. What looked like a short jaunt turns into a major excursion.
On the subject of excursions, Cummings' second marriage was to a serious party girl (which term, of course, means anything but serious), Anne Barton. It was her second marriage, as well, and as ill-fated as both of their firsts.
Cummings was prolific and published, loved to travel, which is a comfort to peripatetic me. He was (like many artists) given to being spectator as much as (if not more than) participant, was as sombre as he was sensuist, and could plait words like a nimble-fingered teenaged girl at a slumber party braiding hair.
One of his best-selling books bore the title of . It had no title. Periodically, I try to imagine ordering that from a bookstore. How would you ask for it? 'You know. Cummings' book with no name.' That would convey nothing to a 'look I just have a job here because my parents say I have to work' bookstore clerk and little to even the above average book-loving shop employee.
Fortune and timing altered Cummings' life again when his father was forced to retire (due to the merging of different quarters of the church). That retirement reunited -- and perhaps united -- father and son. There was a family trip to Europe. There were chances to reconcile differences. The two Edwards, met (finally) as adults, and were given and took a chance to know each other in new ways.
Cummings the Elder died in 1926, in a car accident, putting ends to many stories. Cummings the Younger received recognition for his poetry, but not for his other works.
It's almost a pity that Cummings' work is ineffably untranslatable. He created something that can be only so. In that, there is a kind of perfection. How could you translate 'death(having lost)' into hiragana, katakana and kanji? Into sign language, that most intimate of hands, maybe, but into other words and other symbols, no.
In E. E. Cummings: the Magic Maker, the late Charles Norman writes, 'the mere mention of his name can bring entire poems to mind . . . an artist lives by his works of art.'
Peering at his life through that light, Cummings cannot be seen as truly dead. How dead could such a celebrant of life be, how dead one who so sang the body? I hear these words in the warm voice of a loving, living man (not in a lecture hall). They are words that lover will offer to lover, in different timbres and chambers, again and again:
Cummings was prolific and published, loved to travel, which is a comfort to peripatetic me. He was (like many artists) given to being spectator as much as (if not more than) participant, was as sombre as he was sensuist, and could plait words like a nimble-fingered teenaged girl at a slumber party braiding hair.
One of his best-selling books bore the title of . It had no title. Periodically, I try to imagine ordering that from a bookstore. How would you ask for it? 'You know. Cummings' book with no name.' That would convey nothing to a 'look I just have a job here because my parents say I have to work' bookstore clerk and little to even the above average book-loving shop employee.
Fortune and timing altered Cummings' life again when his father was forced to retire (due to the merging of different quarters of the church). That retirement reunited -- and perhaps united -- father and son. There was a family trip to Europe. There were chances to reconcile differences. The two Edwards, met (finally) as adults, and were given and took a chance to know each other in new ways.
Cummings the Elder died in 1926, in a car accident, putting ends to many stories. Cummings the Younger received recognition for his poetry, but not for his other works.
It's almost a pity that Cummings' work is ineffably untranslatable. He created something that can be only so. In that, there is a kind of perfection. How could you translate 'death(having lost)' into hiragana, katakana and kanji? Into sign language, that most intimate of hands, maybe, but into other words and other symbols, no.
In E. E. Cummings: the Magic Maker, the late Charles Norman writes, 'the mere mention of his name can bring entire poems to mind . . . an artist lives by his works of art.'
Peering at his life through that light, Cummings cannot be seen as truly dead. How dead could such a celebrant of life be, how dead one who so sang the body? I hear these words in the warm voice of a loving, living man (not in a lecture hall). They are words that lover will offer to lover, in different timbres and chambers, again and again:
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
- firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . And eyes big love-crumbs.
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
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