I wonder if CAS's views on Cummings mellowed with the passing of time. In 1932 he wrote rather scathingly about the "stream-of-consciousness school" including Cummings; yet his own Haiku bear more than a little resemblance to Cummings work. Then perhaps as a painstaking revisionist he was a little 'jealous' of those whose can write such prose and poetry with out revision.


"That's not writing--that's typing."
-- Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac's method of composition for On the Road

As CAS wrote in his 1945 review of Marianne Moore's book of "poetry", Nevertheless:

"The six pieces in this tiny volume [...] impress the present viewer as being fairly mild examples of modernist decadence. That is to say, [these poems] are as far from good poetry as they are from the absolute deliquescence of thought and language in such a writer* as E.E. Cummings".

That does not sound like either mellowing or "jealously" to me!


*Note that CAS does not use the word poet--Kyberean

Whether it implies "mellowing" or not, I do not that Clark very much
enjoyed the poem that begins "O sweet, spontaneous earth..."
and ends with -- "...how often have religions taken thee upon their
scraggy knees and pommelled thee, that thou mightest concieve Gods.
Yet true to thine incomparable couch of death, thy rythmic lover,
Thou answerest them only with spring."
(from memory and maybe imperfect, but that's the main idea) -
We had a good time examining this one - it's not especially deep but
well written.

e.e. cummings - O sweet spontaneous

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the doting


fingers of
prurient philosophies pinched
and poked


thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy


beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy
knees squeezing and


buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
but
true


to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover


thou answerest


them only with


spring

You have an amazing memory for poetry Dr F. I remember so little. Perhaps they beat it in to you a little more thoroughly in school than they do theses days.

I'm pleased to see my favourite writer did not only have bad things to say about another of my favourite writers. Theres enough chaos in my head with out them fighting each other.

B.

Perhaps the closest we'll ever come to achieving utopia is when entirely different types of life simply remain invisible to one another. As Nietzsche wisely wrote, [paraphrased from memory]: "May looking away be my only form of negation".

The thought of CAS and e. e. cummings duking it out is one, I must say, that brings a smile to my face, and a tear of pleasure to my eye.

I wonder more what he thought of Robison Jeffers' style of versification more than I do of Cummings'.

voleboy wrote:

Quote:

The thought of CAS and e. e. cummings duking it out is one, I must say, that brings a smile to my face, and a tear of pleasure to my eye.

The thought of CAS applying his saber to cummings brings a tear of pleasure to mine. ;-) (Yes, I have yet to live up to my own above-referenced "utopian" ideals, but I'm working on it!).

Regarding Jeffers, the following quotation from CAS's "On Fantasy" gives us at least an inkling of his views on that subject:

"One may write of horses and hippopotomi but not of hippogriffs; of biographers, but not of ghouls; of slum-harlots or the hetairae of Nob Hill but not of succubi. In short, all pipe-dreams, all fantasies not authorized by Freudianism, by sociology, and the five senses, are due for the critical horse-laugh, when, through ignorance, effrontery, or preference, they find a place in the subject matter of some author unlucky enough to have been born into the age of Jeffers, Hemingway, and Joyce".

Part of Smith's attitude towards Jeffers may have been slightly tinged by jealousy, since the latter poet was also a protege of George Sterling, and one whose aesthetic was more favored by the literati of his time. Unlike cummings, Moore, or Gertrude Stein, I think CAS did respect Jeffers, some of whose work contains cosmic-astronomic themes not unlike those of Smith's.
Incidentally, during the 1950s, when Carol Dorman (laters Clark's wife) visited Carmel on a regular basis, one of her offspring used to toss rocks at an old guy who turned out to be Jeffers! **Snicker**
Best,
Scott

Quote:

[...]I think CAS did respect Jeffers [...]

Any sources for this? I'm just curious. The only other reference that I can find to Jeffers is in the Selected Letters, where CAS claims that the work of Sterling and Jeffers isn't going to allow him any room to treat of erotic themes, and that he might have do something altogether opposite.

I suppose that I would use the term resentful, rather than jealous, to describe CAS's reactions to certain of his more "successful" contemporaries, but the line between the two can sometimes be a fine one.