Antonio Ruiz writes, "We cannot say that Cummings is a Dadaist, but there are important parallels between some of his aesthetic conceptions and experiments, and Dada" (107). Ruiz asserts that
Although Ruiz believes that "Certainly, Cummings’s aesthetics do not share the nihilism and radicalism of Dadaism" (111), nonetheless, he is at pains to explain a kind of "radical modernism" being practiced by cummings and William Carlos Williams, one that perhaps collapses or erases the distinction between the modern and the postmodern.Cummings’s relation to Dadaism may well be summarized in the observation by Richard Kennedy that he adopted “the Dada principle to destroy the accepted and the traditional in order to discover something new and surprising in artistic effect, or in order to seek some hidden truth that lies beyond the rational” (Dreams in the Mirror 71). Indeed the destruction of all convention seems to be the main, almost only objective of [No Title]. Friedman refers to this work as a “total rejection of categories,” and Cummings himself describes the prologue as “crazy text.” The work can be considered a “capriccio,” or divertimento, though perhaps it is more appropriate to see it as a Dadaist attack on the story genre and its conventions.(108-9)
Ihab Hassan has given us a polemical chart detailing the characteristics of the two literary moments. Yet, reviewing them, I am struck by how much of Modernism we must exclude in order to make the binaries work, and how much of a saboteur cummings seems in retrospect:
It is quite true that cummings focused relentlessly on undoing literary expectations and beliefs through the radical deviancy of his word-formations, not only in separating parts of existing words but in coining hundreds and hundreds of new ones based upon a strategy of negation, as Richard Cureton has argued, developing extensive lists of words formed from "Un-":Modernism PostmodernismRomanticism/Symbolism Pataphysics/DadaismForm (conjunctive, closed) Antiform (disjunctive, open)Purpose PlayDesign ChanceHierarchy AnarchyMastery/Logos Exhaustion/SilenceArt Object/Finished Work Process/Performance/HappeningDistance ParticipationCreation/Totalization Decreation/DeconstructionSynthesis AntithesisPresence AbsenceCentering Dispersal (Dismemberment 267–68)
When Seven-Up instituted its "Un-Cola" campaign, cummings must have been laughing from the grave. . . .
NOUN BASE: unanimal, unbeing, unday, unday, undeath, undeath, undoom, undream, unearth, uneyes, unfools, ungod, unhands, unhe, unhearts, unlife, unlife, unlives, unlove, unlove, unmeaning, unman, unminds, unmind, unmind, unmiracle, unnoise, unpoets, unrepute, unself, unself, unsleep, unsmile, unstreet, unstrength, unthing, unthing, unthings, unvoice, unwhores, unwish, unwish, unworld, unworld, unworlds, unworlds, unworlds, unworld, unworld.VERB BASE: unbecame, undie, undream, uneats, unexist, ungrows, unmate, unsays, unsinging, unsits, unstrolls, unteach, unteaches, untouch.ADJECTIVE BASE: unalive, unbig, undead, undead, undying, unshapeful, unshy, unslender, unslowly, unsmaller, unstrange, untheknowdulous, unwondering. (Cureton 218)
Works Cited
Cureton, Richard. "E.E. Cummings: A Study of the Poetic Use of Deviant Morphology."Poetics Today 1.1/2: Special Issue: Literature, Interpretation,Communication (Autumn, 1979): 213-244
Hassan, Ihab. The Dismemberment of Orpheus. Toward a Postmodern Literature. Madison:
U of Wisconsin P, 1982.
Kennedy, Richard. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings. New York: Liveright,
1994.
Ruiz, Antonio. “The Dadaist Prose of Williams and Cummings: A Novelette and
[No Title].” William Carlos Williams Review 28.1-2 (Spring/Fall
2008):101-115
Reading cummings's poetry literally gave me a headache. I can appreciate his desire to innovate and express himself in a unique way, but if, as Ruiz put it, "the destruction of all convention" is the goal, where does that leave the reader? Poetry can often be difficult enough to parse without adding mind games to the proceedings, and that's exactly what Cummings seems to be doing, taking pleasure in intentional obfuscation. The word "saboteur" applies not only to cummings's relationship with Modernist traits, but with his relationship to his audience. Were it not for the commentary provided by Richard S. Kennedy, I'm not sure how much I, being rather allergic to abstraction, would have been able to get out of cummings's work. Even with a bit of explanation, I'm still left puzzled as to why cummings felt that this was the best way to get his point across.
ReplyDeleteI find it amusing that William Carlos Williams is included in this discussion of "radical modernism" given that Williams, in the 60 Minutes interview cited in John Pollock's essay, rejects "(im)c-a-t(mo)" as a poem. From the sound of it, Williams would likely object to being lumped in with cummings, even as he maintains respect for his fellow poet. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that cummings himself might object to having labels like Dadaist and Modernist applied to his work. Isn't the whole point of operating outside the norm so that one can avoid such categorization?
Cummings’s poetry befuddled me to the point of utter annoyance. The abstraction that he employs is difficult to comprehend and his poetry seems to intentionally accost the reader with its unconventionality. I agree with Michael that Cummings distances himself from his readers by requiring them to work too hard to imagine a falling cat. I feel like the poem (im)c-a-t(mo) could have just as well been written by a disoriented cat because I didn’t fully understand what all the whirling an tumbling was about until I read John Pollack’s essay. Although I think Cummings defies classification, if he absolutely has to be categorized as something, I don’t think Dadaism is the right term. Perhaps a form of radical Modernism would be more apt. He uses a sense of alienation, but rather than the characters, he alienates the reader. Also, Cummings most definitely defies convention as the Modernists like to do, but he raises the bar by separating the syllables of a single word, in which the reader must struggle to piece together. I think his methods are just too unconventional and just cruel to unsuspecting readers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Michael and Shanna that Cummings is unconventional, abstract and difficult. I also agree with that Cummings seems to delight in befuddling his readers and making them work very hard to picture a cat falling off a table, and I will admit that without Pollock’s and Kennedy’s explanations I would have found most of Cummings’ poems incomprehensible. But I still liked his work a lot. I would argue that Cummings is certainly not a dadaist. He is far too positive and hopeful for that. I would identify him as a cubist, and a very good one at that.
ReplyDeleteI’m a big fan of cubism, the idea that fracturing preconceived expectations can lead to new ways of thinking. I think the success of cubism in elevating the human intellect by forcing it to think in different ways is circumspect, but I appreciate cubism’s aim and I enjoy the way it has been utilized by writers like Cummings and Stein. Cummings, I feel, is almost more successful as a cubist than Stein, as his poems are emphatically about something. They have readily identifiable subjects, and simple ones at that; cats falling off tables, lighting strikes, ringing church bells. These images are presented in the most round about way possible, forcing the reader to really exert their intelligence to decipher them. I completely agree with Michael that these poems are mind games. They’re puzzles, begging to be solved, and though the final image once all the pieces are assembled may be as simple as a man reading a letter, we feel a sense of satisfaction at having figured it out. And unlike Stein, we actually can figure out what Cummings poems are “about”.
Very few people I have met have good things to say about the experience of reading cummings' poetry. Apparently, William Carlos Williams is one of those people (how long has 60 minutes been on TV??).
ReplyDeleteSo, I sat down with these poems at the table and worked on them as if they were a crossword puzzle or the daily jumble. I rather enjoyed work of it, especially since once I could decipher the language and put the fractured pieces together, the meaning of the poem seemed quite simple, while being clever and multifaceted at the same time.
The treatment of language as visual art in these poems is especially powerful. Cummings poems have an interactive quality to them. The reader has to engage visually in a way that is much more challenging than passively reading the poem. Without having extensive knowledge on the subjects of dadaism and cubism, this element definitely seems more influenced by cubism more than anything else.
My brain needed a little lie down after Cummings typographical assault.
ReplyDeleteI can see how Cummings poetry falls into the "Synthetic Cubism" category since the choice of typography in the layout of his poems moves comprehension past merely the printed word on the page. What I find interesting about the text is the ability to push legibility to the limit—(im)c-a-t(mo) being a prime example. What is the effect upon the reader when the word loses its focus as the center of communication?
I can't claim to understand the intentions behind Cummings sensibilities with the form of his poetry (eg-the fragmentary style of layout and typography choices), but there is a temporal disconnect to me that creates tension different from The Waste Land. Eliiot creates an "unreality" of non-linear time with the fragments of human understanding, history and with the constant allusions to high and low culture. His use of non-linearity was in-line with the aesthetics of his contemporaries and seemed his attempt to create a bridge between "contemporaneity and antiquity".
With Cummings work, I am acutely aware of the borders of the page and the layout of the words in the white space. I can't read the poems traditionally from left to right. In fact, while reading Cummings, my head probably moves like I am watching tennis match. Using punctuation as a stand in for an entire word—the ampersand for the word "and" or parentheses that enclose individual characters—stress the modernist influences and the desire to (as Richard Kennedy states) "break-up and restructure". In The Cubist Break-Up in particular, the last stanza emphasizes the diminishing toll of a bell by how the word "bell" is arranged on the page. We can see how Cummings doesn't limit the currency of a word to merely its representation as a complete word.
To me, reading Cummings typographical experimentations hybridizes the experience of reading a piece of poetry and looking at a painting. In the end, though, I wonder what my role in bringing out meaning in the text really is. Maybe Brion Gysin's oft repeated quote, "Writing is fifty years behind painting" can be applied here. Maybe not. I wonder what Cummings could have done with a Mac and Adobe Illustrator.