Annotated Bibliography
of E. E. Cummings Scholarship: 1985–1993

[Spring 6  New Series (1997): 175-186]

This annotated bibliography includes scholarly works related to E. E. Cummings printed in the United States from 1985–93. Its scope includes books, chapters in books, reviews of books, periodical articles, encyclopedia and dictionary entries, and doctoral dissertation abstracts, including reprints. The purpose of this bibliography is to provide Cummings scholars with a list of critical works easily obtained through interlibrary loan services at major U.S. universities. To have at our fingertips lists of materials pertinent to our projects saves us valuable research time; to know before obtaining a critical piece the basic ideas that it treats saves us valuable time in not tracking down unneeded material.

My intent is obviously not to supplant Guy Rotella’s excellent reference guides (see Spring No. 1, 1992, and No. 2, 1993), but to supplement them. While one will find much overlap in our citations, one will find some references in each that the other failed to uncover. Moreover, the difference in perspective that each of us offers may present readers a more objective survey of the material covered.

I have included only those works printed in the United States because they are almost certain to be obtainable. Although Canadian and British criticism, as well as Italian, French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, and other international scholarship grows in quality and quantity, it is not always easy to access. One hopes that the electronic revolution will soon change that. In the meantime, while the persistent scholar will certainly find this list inadequate to his or her tasks, I offer it as an aid to those beginning to plumb the Cummings puzzle.

Norman Friedman and the Interlibrary Loan Service at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville have been of great service to me, and I thank them heartily. I use MLA acronyms for journals.

Faulkner, Douglas. "Photographing Cummings’ Art." Spring 2 (1993): 34–39.

Recounts the author’s adventures photographing the Gotham Book Mart collection (before its sale) and the Watson collection. Finds Cummings’ spontaneous sketches his most enduring artwork.

Forrest, David V. "A First Look at the Dreams of E. E. Cummings: The Preconscious of a Synthetic Genius." Spring 2 (1993): 8–19.

Psychoanalytically explores Cummings’ dreams, usually erotic, involving two women. Views the women variously as Cummings’ wives, daughter, mother, sister, and nursemaid. Refers to "two women dreams" in Freud’s notebooks in an attempt to explain Cummings’ dreams.

Gerber, Philip L. "Boswell in America: The Case of Charles Norman." Spring 2 (1993): 57–69.

Describes the relationship between Charles Norman and Cummings, and views Norman’s biography of Cummings, The Magic Maker, as anti-Boswellian in its avoidance of the scandals surrounding Cummings’ first marriage: both Marianne Moore and the Sibley Watsons, who knew the most about Cummings’ relations with Elaine Thayer, avoided being interviewed by Norman. Concludes that Cummings was happy with the biography because he censored it, yet in the end it is a flawed work for that very reason.

Headrick, Paul. "The Enormous Room and the Uses of Parody." Spring 2 (1993): 48–56.

Argues that The Enormous Room is a parody of Pilgrim’s Progress due to the former’s "ironic inversions" of the latter: Cummings rejects Puritanical standards, emphasizing individuality over conformity; at the same time, Cummings (the character), the parallel of Christian, gains his sense of self through B. Marks that while Bunyan’s tale is allegorical, Cummings’ is "meta-allegorical" because he makes "an allegory out of nonfictional material."

LaPalma, Marina deBellagente. "On Re-Reading E. E. Cummings: An Essay Poem." Spring 2 (1993): 84–87.

Praises "(will you teach a / wretch to live," noting Cummings’ use of repetition and assonance, and his avoidance of cliché.

Locklin, Gerald. "The Influence of Cummings on Selected Contemporary Poets." Spring 2 (1993): 40–47.

Relates the statements of Charles Bukowski, Billy Collins, Richard Kostelanetz, Edward Field, Ronald Koertge, and Marvin Malone regarding Cummings’ influence on their poetry. Concludes that Cummings’ experimentation and openness liberated them to develop their own poetic individuality.

Ousby, Ian. "E. E. Cummings." The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 225–26.

A very basic sketch of Cummings’ life and career.

Richards, Catherine A. "Scoring Cummings." Spring 2 (1993): 20–33.

Puts forth Richards’ procedure for setting a Cummings poem to music, whereby she matches a melody to the tone of the poem. Transcribes two of her compositions.

Rotella, Guy. "E. E. Cummings: A Reference Guide (Again) Updated." Spring 2 (1993): 107–123.

An annotated bibliography covering Cummings scholarship worldwide from 1987 through 1991.

Welch, Michael Dylan. "Three Hokku by E. E. Cummings." Frogpond XVI:1 (Spring–Summer 1993): 51–56.

An analysis of Cummings’ three known hokku (haiku), dismissed as inferior. (Frogpond is published by the Haiku Society of America.)

Cohen, Milton A. "The Dial’s ‘White-Haired Boy’: E. E. Cummings as Dial Artist, Poet, and Essayist." Spring 1 (1992): 9–27.

Sketches Cummings’ relationship with Watson and Thayer, describes "interplays between poem and picture" in The Dial, evaluates Cummings’ art and essays, and determines that "[t]oo often, it seems, they [Watson and Thayer] place loyalty to their friend [Cummings] before their usual exacting standards." Includes reproductions of Cummings’ artwork appearing in The Dial as well as his publishing history therein.

"E. E. Cummings 1894–1962." Poetry Criticism. Vol. 5. Ed. Robyn V. Young. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 68–112.

Excerpts ten articles (by Laura Riding and Robert Graves, R. P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, Norman Friedman, G. S. Fraser, William Heyen, Dickran Tashjian, Guy Davenport, Milton A. Cohen, and Guy Rotella), and provides three photographs and a short list for further reading. Discusses in the introduction influences on Cummings’ poetry, his experimentation, and critical approaches to his works; offers a concise biography and list of principal works.

Friedman, Norman. "Not ‘e. e. cummings.’" Spring 1 (1992): 114–21.

Establishes once and for all that, despite his own occasional decapitalization, Cummings preferred to have his name capitalized by others.

Friedman, Norman and David V. Forrest. "E. E. Cummings, ‘Petit arbre.’" Spring 1 (1992): 105–07.

Reprints D. Jon Grossman’s French translation and lists his translations of Cummings’ works.

———. "An E. E. Cummings Stamp?" Spring 1 (1992): 108–13.

Traces the unsuccessful efforts of Friedman and Forrest to effect the United States Postal Service’s issuance of a stamp in honor of Cummings.

———. "William Slater Brown and The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 87–91.

Reprints a letter from Brown to his nephew setting the record straight: he and Cummings were jailed in France during World War I for relating (suppressed) stories of French mutinies to the soldiers at the front. Contains two photographs of Brown.

Guillory, Daniel L. Rev. of E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904–1962, ed. George James Firmage. Library Journal 117:2 (1992): 93.

Lauds Firmage’s work as "the definitive edition of Cummings’s poetry."

Harmon, William, ed. "Edward Estlin Cummings 1894–1962." The Top 500 Poems. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. 1011–13.

Includes "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "next to of course god america i." Compares Cummings’ originality to Donne’s and Byron’s. Calls Cummings "one of the great sonneteers."

Headrick, Paul. "‘Brilliant Obscurity’: The Reception of The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 46–76.

Thoroughly covers and discusses critical assessments of The Enormous Room from its publication through 1987. Traces chronologically critics’ approaches to the work’s fictionality or factuality, its political connotations, Cummings’ innovative style, public perceptions, views of the various theoretical schools, and the work’s place in the American canon. Concludes that future attention to The Enormous Room "will depend on the direction that continuing developments in literary criticism, always connected to politics, take."

Kennedy, Richard S. "E. E. Cummings’ Analysis of The House of the Seven Gables." NHR 18:2 (1992): 1, 3–4.

Prints Cummings’ diary entry of ca. 6 June 1944, wherein he spontaneously examines the power struggles among the characters in Hawthorne’s Seven Gables. Cummings ponders good versus evil, positive versus negative in relation to these characters and their "Power."

———. "E. E. Cummings, A Major Minor Poet." Spring 1 (1992): 37–45.

Defines the elements contributing to recognition of a "major" poet, then explains that Cummings is a minor poet because of his difficulties with structure and the "great deal of chaff that he published"; he is, however, a major minor poet due to "the dazzle of his unique style and the balance of his wit and sentiment."

Labriola, Albert C. "Reader-Response Criticism and the Poetry of E. E. Cummings: ‘Buffalo Bill’s defunct’ and ‘in Just-.’" Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition 31:2 (1992): 38–44.

Explicates "Buffalo Bill’s defunct" by analyzing Cummings’ approach to historical facts surrounding Buffalo Bill; explicates "in Just-" by examining grammatical and typographical juxtapositions.

Olsen, Taimi. "Language and Silence in The Enormous Room." Spring 1 (1992): 77–86.

Explains that Cummings manipulates grammar and conventional prose style to convey the inadequacy of language and to describe perceptions and thoughts. Argues that the quiet characters in The Enormous Room display how man "transcends the limitations of words as a restrictive system."

Pollock, John. "‘Cambridge Ladies’: Comments on Milton and Cummings." NConL 22:5 (1992): 2.

Not seen yet.

Rodriguez, Ralph E. "The Foregrounded Reader in E. E. Cummings." SECOLB 16:2 (1992): 132–48.

Describes how the poet aids the reader by providing a linguistic foreground. Offers examples of Cummings’ foregrounding through his use of typography, orthography, semantics, parallelism, and parentheses, noting that Cummings is "relying on the ability of the reader to distinguish between foreground and background."

Rotella, Guy. "E. E. Cummings: A Reference Guide (Again) Updated." Spring 1 (1992): 127–43.

An annotated bibliography updating Rotella’s survey of Cummings scholarship through 1986. Includes domestic and many international works. Points out in his introduction the notable efforts and the growing international interest in Cummings.

Vendler, Helen. "Poetry in Review." Rev. of E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904–1962, ed. George James Firmage. YR 80:3 (1992): 209–21.

Finds this edition incomplete and unnecessary. Reviews Cummings’ legacy, commenting on "l(a," "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-g-r," and others. Maintains that "Cummings (who tended to loquacity) was at his best when he had a mini-plot to propel him," that he "was capable of astonishingly bad verse," and that his "love" poems are sexist.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Cummings’ Him—and Me." Spring 1 (1992): 28–36.

Explicates Him as a partially autobiographical work that is "grounded in heterosexual relationships, disappointing ones." Claims that Cummings is "Him" and Elaine Thayer is "Me."

1991

Firmage, George J., ed. E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904–1962. New York: Liveright, 1991.

Contains all published poems, excluding variants; also contains the unpublished poems from Etcetera and thirty-six "Uncollected Poems," including Cummings’ translation of Louis Aragon’s Le Front Rouge.

"E. E. Cummings 1894–1962." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 68. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991. 23–52.

Reprints ten excerpted articles (by R. P. Blackmur, Philip Horton and Sherry Mangan, S. V. Baum, Roy Harvey Pearce, William Carlos Williams, John Clendenning, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Clive James, Malcom Cowley, and John Bayley) and Babette Deutsch’s satiric letter-poem. Introduction offers a Cummings self-portrait, a description of his style and subject matter, a concise biography, a short, chronological evaluation and an assessment of he "markedly divided" criticism on Cummings’ works. Provides a list of Cummings’ major works and a short list for further reading.

Peterson, Raileen L. "E. E. Cummings’ Poetics: ‘the necessary anything.’" Diss. Ball State U, 1991. DAI 52 (1991): 920.

Examines Cummings’ "Epithalamion," ballade derivations, and sonnets—his "traditional poems"—to arrive at an aesthetic credo. Considered in the study are Cummings’ innovations in typography, syntax, and rhyme and metrical patterns. Concludes that "his aesthetic theories are grounded in the modern romantic movement."

Powers, Kate. "Cummings’ ‘From Spiralling Ecstatically This.’" Expl 49:4 (1991): 235–37.

Finds that, in the Nativity, Cummings addresses how "a passive, enduring love overcom[es] an active, aggressive hate." Defines two movements in the poem effecting this tension: "God’s real action on man’s world" and "man’s potential action on God’s world."

1990

Cohen, Milton A. "E. E. Cummings: Modernist Painter and Poet." Smithsonian Studies in American Art 4:2 (1990): 54–74.

Relates that in 1919 Cummings’ paintings won him important recognition as a self-taught painter. States that, with his success from 1919 to 1924, Cummings "seemed well on his way to establishing himself publicly, like Dante Gabriel Rossetti . . . as an artist of two equal callings, a Modernist of poetry and painting." Demonstrates that Cummings’ abandonment of abstraction in his painting led critics and the public to view Cummings only as a writer by 1931. Compares and contrasts Cummings’ poetry and painting, finding that both create motion and intensity, though his poetry involves a "calculated" spontaneity while his painting "pursued this spontaneity more directly." States that "Cummings was a born writer, a self-made painter." Illustrated with fourteen Cummings paintings (four in color) and three sketches.

"Cummings, E E (Edward Estlin)." Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. Gen. ed. Magnus Magnusson. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. 371.

A very brief biography.

Dunlap, Marion Crawford, III. "Into Modernism: The Early Careers of Dos Passos, MacLeish, and Cummings." Diss. U of South Carolina, 1990. DAI 51 (1991): 2743.

Considers as deleterious the effects of Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Pound—particularly Ulysses, The Waste Land, and The Cantos—on Cummings’ stylistic development.

Jagel, Nancy J. "Expatriation in American Texts: Language, Self-Knowledge, and Perception of Place." Diss. U of Illinois at Chicago, 1990. DAI 51 (1991): 1991.

Finds that Cummings’ experiences abroad affected his writing, with emphasis on The Enormous Room. Weighs the effects of foreign language acquisition, cultural observations, and corrections of preconceptions on Cummings’ personal and professional development.

Kennedy, Richard S. "E. E. Cummings 1894–1962." The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol. 2. Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1990. 1286–87.

Provides a concise biography and criticism of major works. Lists primary and several secondary works.

Cooley, John. "White Writers and the Harlem Renaissance." The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations. Ed. Amritjit Singh, et al. New York: Garland, 1989. 13–22.

Discusses Cummings’ portrayal of Jean le Nègre (The Enormous Room) as an example of white writers’ depiction of blacks as "childish" and "simplistic."

"Cummings, E. E." Guide to American Poetry Explication, Vol. 2: Modern and Contemporary. Ed. John R. Leo. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. 82–95.

A biographical listing of explications from 1925 through 1987.

McBride, Katharine Winters, ed. A Concordance to the Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.

Includes all words (over 13,000), including those "constructed" by Cummings, found in Complete Poems (1972 U.S. edition). Lists words alphabetically in context, in a very readable format. Also lists frequency of words.

Sullivan, William. "E. E. Cummings." Modern American Poetry: 1865–1950. Alan Shucard, Fred Moramarco, and William Sullivan. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. 190–202.

Notes that Cummings treats feeling and detachment as separate modes, following more often the romantic tradition with his expressive lyrics. Offers a short biography, and compares Cummings with Hart Crane, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman: "[a]s with Whitman and Crane, love is a visionary theme"; "[w]ith Thoreau, he believes in a majority of one, and he also believes, as did Emerson, that to be a man, one must be a nonconformist." Argues that Cummings followed both the New England Transcendentalists and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century "carpe diem" lyric poets; to these he added innovation to "establish his own unique voice and his own mode of singing."

Aldan, Daisy. Rev. of POETandPAINTER: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings’s Early Work, by Milton A. Cohen. WLT 62 (1988): 460–61.

Praises Cohen’s knowledge and understanding of Cummings’ painting and poetry, concluding that Cohen "has succeeded in leading us to a redefinition of Cummings’s creative identity."

Gerber, Philip L. "E. E. Cummings’s Season of the Censor." ConL 29:2 (1988): 177–200.

Traces Cummings’ development in the art of avoiding the censor. Gives numerous examples of his methods of rendering copulation, masturbation, excretion, and genitalia without being proscribed.

Webster, Michael Paul. "The Semiotics of Aurally and Visually Elastic Poetries: 1910–1940 (Marinetti, Apollinaire, Avant-Garde)." Diss. Indiana U, 1988. DAI 50 (1989): 134.

Explores Cummings’ aesthetic ideal with regard to his use of persona, visual syntax, wordplay, and punctuation. Compares his aesthetic procedures with those of Concrete poets. Relies on the theories of Peter Burger, Roland Barthes, C. S. Peirce, and Umberto Eco "for disentangling interartistic interrelations."

Cohen, Milton A. POETandPAINTER: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings’s Early Work. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1987.

Introduces the work by examining the private Cummings through his notes on aesthetic theory and principles. Traces Cummings’ development as a visual artist, from his early success as a Modernist painter—when artistically, like Picasso, he "did not wish to cut all ties with the recognizable world"—through his later Expressionistic, Surrealistic, and Naturalistic periods (his "new direction" of spontaneity and subjectivity). Names early influences on Cummings’ art as, among others, Cezanne, Morgan Russell, Albert Gleizes, Picasso, and Gaston Lachaise. Explains Cummings’ interest in the "thinking-feeling dichotomy": Cummings merged conscious, analytic "perceptual wholeness" with unconscious (dreamlike), nonsensical "formal wholeness" to arrive at a unity comprising the artist and his work. Offers a diagram detailing Cummings’ "paths to wholeness," which involve "feeling, perception, three-dimensional form, motion, and analogues among the arts": this forms the foundation of Cohen’s book. Notes that Keats and Bergson influenced Cummings’ view toward feeling as individual and intuitive. Asserts that influences on Cummings’ theories of perception include Pound, Apollinaire, and William James, as well as Gestalt theory, that sensation and perception have primacy over recognition and thought and, therefore, a "binding rhythm" must sharpen perception in order to slow recognition in art. Lists and illustrates Cummings’ techniques for approaching "gesture" ("wholly sensuous language"), which are "inversion of normal word order, miscapitalization, imitative punctuation, and the breaking of a word or phrase." Diagrams several poems to compare Cummings’ abstraction of poetry with that of his painting. Explores Cummings’ attention to perceptual ambiguity and perceptual balance. Looks at his attempts to achieve three-dimensionality ("seeing around" colors and words) as he studied Cezanne, Seurat, Picasso, and Freud. Explains how Cummings translates "the visual dynamics of complementary colors to the psychological dynamics of antithetical words," how his themes and poetic structure work aesthetically, and how Cummings approached film and theater psychoanalytically, particularly in Him. Argues, "Of all the sensuous qualities that inform Cummings’ poetry and painting, motion is probably the most prominent"; to Cummings, the verb is "linguistic motion," and "stasis is only an appearance; everything is really in motion." Includes among those who share Cummings’ interest in motion Joseph Stella, Marinetti, T. S. Eliot, and Joyce. Dissects Cummings’ notes, diagrams, and sketches to explain his painting techniques. Analyzes Cummings’ poems as expressions of motion and in motion, looking at themes, rhythm, context, lines, and uses of verbs, capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. Places Cummings’ painting and poetry in historical context, and describes the interrelations of arts in Rimington, Scriabin, Kandinsky, the Synchromists, and the Imagists. Draws analogies between Cummings’ ideas on painting and music, between those on painting and poetry, and between those on poetry and music. Shows how Cummings integrated the three into a synesthesia of "vowel-color" and "visual harmonics." Ties together Cummings’ thoughts on wholeness, feeling, spontaneity, perception, visual dynamics, and motion, with a look at critics’ understanding of Cummings’ aesthetic. Concludes that, by seeking aesthetic wholeness, Cummings risked division and contradiction in his painting and poetry. Includes an appendix containing a list of exhibitions featuring Cummings’ art and a bibliography including lists of manuscript and art collections, works and reviews on Cummings’ art, works on his aesthetic theories and on relations between his art and poetry. Also includes fifty-six black and white illustrations, paintings, and notes, along with twelve color plates.

Davenport, Guy. "Transcendental Satyr." Every Force Evolves a Form. San Francisco: North Point P, 1987. 29–36.

Claims that Cummings "seems to have invented himself out of a set of choice influences: the Greek lyric, the comic strip Krazy Kat, Don Marquis . . ." Inveighs against Cummings’ personal life and declares, "For all its excellence, [Cummings’ poetry] has no periods of development."

DiYanni, Robert. Modern American Poets: Their Voices and Visions. New York: Random House, 1987.

Transcribes "Me up at does" as an example for the study of word order (54–55), "l(a" as a "poem for the eye," and "Buffalo Bill’s" as a poem "arranged for voice" (81–83), along with four other poems and a short biography (553–56).

Herzfeld, John. "Betwixt and Between." Rev. of POETandPAINTER: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings’s Early Work, by Milton A. Cohen. AN 86:9 (1987): 13.

Offers quotes from Cohen’s book along with a Cummings self-portrait.

Parini, Jay, ed. An Invitation to Poetry. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1987.

Prints "anyone lived in a pretty how town" to illustrate various types of rhyme (154–55), "Buffalo Bill’s" to demonstrate the effects of spacing and placement (164), and "i sing of Olaf" (251–52) in an appendix containing war poems.

Van Peer, Willie. "Top-Down and Bottom-Up: Interpretative Strategies in Reading E. E. Cummings." NLH 18:3 (1987): 597–609.

Argues that both the "top-down" (inferential) and the "bottom-up" (integrational) approaches should be implemented by scholars in order to interpret literary works, such as Cummings’ "yes is a pleasant country:."

Bast, Doreen Minsinger. "New Light on E. E. Cummings’ Drama, Him (Avant-Garde, Psychological, Mystic)." Diss. Ball State U, 1986. DAI 47 (1987): 3035.

Approaches Him with regard to Cummings’ rebus-mandala illustration for the first edition’s cover. Looks at Cummings’ writing style, his "Notes for Him," and his psychological references; explicates all twenty-one scenes; includes an extensive bibliography.

"Cummings, Edward Estlin." Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Rev. ed. Eds. J. O. Thorne and T. C. Collocott. New York: Cambridge UP, 1986. 356.

A very brief biography.

Penberthy, Jenny. "E. E. Cummings." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 48: American Poets 1880–1945, Second Series. Ed. Peter Quartermain. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. 117–37.

Follows Cummings’ life and literary history, from his Eight Harvard Poets pieces through the posthumous 73 Poems. Glosses his marital struggles, his critical and public reception, and his later health problems. Contains many photographs of Cummings, his family, and friends, as well as drafts of several poems. States that 1 x 1 is Cummings’ most important volume of poetry in that it brought him respect from many critics. Believes that Cummings developed little through the years, declaring that "Cummings’s own wanderings within a form led, regrettably, to a formula." Notes, however, that Cummings "established the poem as a visual object."

1985

Cureton, Richard D. "Poetry, Grammar, and Epistemology: The Order of Prenominal Modifiers in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings." Lang&S 18:1 (1985): 64–91.

Thoroughly analyzes Cummings’ placement of prenominal modifiers, considering adjectives of size, immeasurability, extended dimension, particularity, number, evaluation, specificity, and proximity. Provides tables for each category that display examples of polyadjectival phrases in context. Demonstrates that Cummings’ adjectival order is the key to unraveling his ideology.

Martland, T. R. "When a Poem Refers." JAAC 43:3 (1985): 266–73.

Examines "l(a" with regard to how well it presents (or imitates) and represents nature. Views form, content, and the observer (reader) as integral to the effectiveness of such a work of art.

Matthews, Kathleen. "Competitive Giants: Satiric Bedrock in Book One of William Carlos Williams’ Paterson." JML 12:2 (1985): 237–60.

Briefly discusses Williams’ interpretation of Cummings’ poetry through the metaphorical Paterson character Hopper Cumming, a Newark minister.

Morris, Ann R. "Cummings’ ‘A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves.’" Expl 43:3 (1985): 37–39.

Sees the drunken bum as Jesus and finds that the speaker’s actions convey a transcendental view of man.

Pagnini, Marcello. "The Case of Cummings." Trans. Keir Elam. PoT 6:3 (1985): 357–73.

Argues that Cummings’ poetry is akin to Soviet cubofuturism, though it is also related to other Cubist, Futurist, Vorticist, and Imagist poetry. Analyzes "what a proud dreamhorse pulling(smoothloomingly)through," stating that "one notes an idiosyncratic substantivization that exploits the deictic nature of the pronoun" and that, in this poem, "What is a syncategoramic term."

Rotella, Guy. "Cummings’ ‘kind)’ and Whitman’s Astronomer." Concerning Poetry 18:1–2 (1985): 39–46.

Notes the similarities and differences between Cummings’ "kind)" and Whitman’s "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," with attention to the poets’ views on science, to the lecturer and his audience, and to the image of night. Concludes that both of their themes involve death and limitation.

Seidman, Barbara. "‘Patronize Your Neighborhood Wake-Up-And-Dreamery’: E. E. Cummings and the Cinematic Imagination." LFQ 13:1 (1985): 10–21.

Not seen yet.

—Knoxville, Tennessee

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