E.E. Cummings: A Disappearing Poet of Always

E. E. Cummings is a poet who has been neglected by critics in the presence of such men as T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound. But the variety, creativity, ardent experimentalism and striking lyricism of Cummings\u27 work demand the reader\u27s attention. His unusual habits of typography, word order and grammatical usage have driven critics away with elicited responses which label his work vague, transparent, and impenetrably personal. The purpose of this paper is to disprove these claims by explaining certain aspects of Cummings\u27 experimentalism. I will discuss first several of his typographical and descriptive idiosyncrasies. Next I will focus on a single device, given the name metonymy by Robert E. Maurer, which carries the weight of many of the ethical ideas of the poems. In Chapter 3 I describe the range of rhetorical structures which Cummings employs to aid the reader in apprehending the role of Cummings\u27 speakers. Finally, to drive home the fact that the reader can appreciate he unusual style of Cummings, I discuss the idea of time in connection with certain of Cummings\u27 love poems. The quantity of verse written by Cummings virtually prohibits a comprehensive study of the poems, but I hope by this paper to bring to light some of the more important issues involved in the appreciation of the poems, and assert strongly that the result of Cummings\u27 experimentalism is clarity and force, not impenetrability