FOR THE RECORD Number 6

For the Record

[Spring 6 (1997): 187-192]

Lewis Miller previously published a companion piece to his present article herein on "she being Brand / -new," entitled "Advertising in Poetry: A Reading of E. E. Cummings’ ‘POEM,OR BEAUTY HURTS MR.VINAL,’" Word & Image, 2, 4 (October–December 1986), 349–62.

Bernard Stehle organized the Third Cummings Centennial Exhibit at the Community College of Philadelphia, October 14–December 1, 1995.

Tom Hunley of Cheney, Washington, whose poem appeared in our previous issue, wrote us:

I’m an MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University, currently teaching a weekly poetry workshop at Airway Heights Correction Center, as well as an Intro to Literature class at Spokane Falls Community College.

As part of my graduate degree, I have to take a comprehensive exam on seven modern poets and seven contemporary poets of my choice. Cummings sits next to Gertrude Stein at the top of my list of modernists, because of the musicality of his work, and because of his ability to be inventive within traditional structures and his willingness to branch out of them when necessary. On his 100th birthday, my friend Sarah Monahan and I made a cake for him, which we brought in to our poetry writing workshop at Eastern. Sarah found one of Cummings’ poems that talked about birthdays, so we lettered that on top of the cake.

We received the following letter from the University of Cordoba in Spain:

My name is Antonio Ruiz Sánchez and I am a member of the English Department at University of Córdoba (Spain). I have always been in love with Cummings. Therefore, when the Head of my Department, years ago, allowed me to choose any topic of North-American poetry, I decided to work on Cummings for my PhD. I discovered, to my surprise, that although Cummings is in most of the anthologies on American poetry we use in Spain, he is still a rather unknown poet, even within academic contexts. In fact, he is missing in many of the syllabi on American Literature of the Spanish universities.

I am doing my best to mend this unfair situation. Cummings’ work is taught at Córdoba University now; his poetry will also be present at the next congress of the Spanish Association for American Studies that will be held next April in León where I will present a paper. Also, a review on one of the Spanish translations has been published in the local newspaper, and a public reading of some of his poems will be held next Tuesday (12/11/1996) in one of the most fashionable locales of my city (Córdoba) within he ‘First Meeting on North American Poetry’ organized by the magazines Plurabelle and Recuento.

I am also researching on the situation of Cummings’ work in Spain: the possible influence of Cummings’ poetry on some Spanish poets, the Spanish translations of his books and poems, and the level of knowledge of him by he general public. I will be able to offer you and the journal Spring a paper entitled ‘Cummings in Spain’ during this year1. As you know, Cummings is a hundred percent an American writer; however, his European experience was crucial in his life and work and, in my opinion, there is still a lot of work to be done on this aspect.

I would also like to join the E. E. Cummings Society and to help you with anything you need in the future (I have enclosed the subscription card).

You probably know already this reference to Cummings: The famous writer Octavio Paz refers to a trip of Cummings and Dos Passos through Spain. He also talks about several meetings between himself and Cummings in New York (in Spanish: Traducción, Literatura y Lierareidad. Barcelona: Tusquets, 1990).

[Editor's note: here is the English reference for the Paz article: Paz, Octavio. "E. E. Cummings." The Siren and the Seashell. Trans. Lysander Kemp and Margaret Sayers Peden. Austin: U of Texas P, 1976. 131-136.]

Gayl Teller, who has previously contributed poems to Spring, and who also appears in this issue, published her second book of poems in 1996. Entitled Shorehaven, it is a fond recapitulation of her girlhood, youth, and marriage as marked by summer vacations at Shorehaven in the Bronx. Contact Gayl should you wish to purchase copy: One Florence Lane, Plainview, New York 11803.

Spring is reviewed briefly in Small Press Review, 28, 7–8 (July–August 1996), Issues 282–3, 18; and Taproot Reviews, Issue #9/10, n.d., 13.

A professor of English at Cambridge University and a fellow of Trinity College, Anne Barton is a reviewer for the New York Review of Books, interestingly having the same name as Cummings’ second wife.

Glen McCloud of Hartford, Connecticut, sent us a clipping from the New York Times, Monday, September 23, 1996, Dance Review Section, by Jennifer Dunning, mentioning a dance by choreographer Douglas Woods based on "somewhere i have never travelled." Dunning’s comment comes from a very strange reading of that poem: "a flowing, boldly simple duet, danced to the music by Arvo Part, for lovers . . . soon to [be] separated by death." Comments anyone?

The Juilliard String Quartet and Orchestra, conducted by Gerard Schwartz, performed David Diamond’s "Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra," Avery Fisher Hall, October 7, 1996.

The following note was received from Robert Wegner of Vestaburg, Michigan, December 17, 1996:

Last October 31 on a TV program titled "Maloney" a schizo, trying to hang on to his sanity, begins reciting (to himself) snatches of poetry, including the line "as freedom is a breakfast food." (No mention of Cummings.) Forbes magazine for November 18, 1996 on the "Thoughts" page (always the last in the magazine) quotes Cummings: "May I be wrong, for whenever men are right they are not young." Richard Morris in his book titled Cosmic Questions observes on page 135: "It would be possible to say that theories of nothingness have become an important part of cosmology in the last few years. . . . a new field, known as quantum cosmology . . . examines the ways in which the universe might have come into existence. And more often than not, scientists in this field form hypotheses about ways in which it might have been formed out of nothing." Ah! Would Cummings smile?

Publisher Harry Smith’s newsletter, International Titles, which came out in early 1997, refers to "in Just- / spring" several times.

Friedman’s granddaughter, Rachel Raman, has a new computer, and she brought up on the screen the entry for Cummings in Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia to show grandpa, and there was that old canard about the poet having changed his name to lowercase. We have written to Compton’s, but so far without reply.

Robert Wegner sent us an item from Time magazine, April 21, 1997, page 32, about the new trendiness of the lowercase "e," and concluding, "Can the e. e. cummings revival be far off?"

Roger Gozdecki, proprietor of "The Book Shop" in Covina, California, and one of our benefactors, sent us a copy of Firsts: The Book Collector’s Magazine, April 1997, containing his article, "An Uppercase [N.B.!] Poet: E. E. Cummings," 28–41, wherein he kindly mentions our Society.

The following people presented talks on Cummings at the American Literature Association conference in Baltimore, May 23–25, 1997: Larry Chott, Claudia Desblaches, William Harmon, Lisa Nunn, and Michael Webster. We hope to publish them in our next issue. Friedman and Stehle served as chairs. Daniel Barnes was also scheduled to participate but he was unable to attend—he promised to send us his paper, however.

The ever-vigilant Robert Wegner sent us a book ad from the Paperback Book Club brochure for Eros (Linda Ferrer, curator of photography, and Jane Lahr, text editor), featuring sensual photographs and erotic writing, including E. E. Cummings.

Liveright has published paperback editions of ViVa and Xaipe, and will bring out an edition of Cummings’ experimental poetry edited by Richard Kostelanetz, as well as an edition of the erotic poetry.

Richard Kostelanetz spoke on "Downtown Writing and the Literature of SoHo: The New York Avant-Garde from E. E. Cummings through John Cage," at the Fales Library, New York University, May 8, 1997.

We received this fax from Dr. Curtis Steele of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on May 7, 1997:

I want to express my appreciation to you for the absolutely wonderful Fall issue of Spring. I’ve read it and am re-reading it with the greatest pleasure. I particularly appreciate getting to know Cummings as a human being, through the accounts of those who were "close" to him and Marion Morehouse; and from those who have carefully studied his life and art.

I’m an enthusiastic Cummings fan. I marvel at the subtle levels of meanings contained within the juxtaposition of words, spatial arrangements and images. I continue to be amazed to discover and re-discover poems that are fresh that I can’t recall having seen before. So many quotes from him suggest themselves at this point that I’ll decline to use. Well, one exception:

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened) [Complete 663]

I continue to be puzzled by those who rank him as less than a major poet. I don’t understand (or want to) the politics of academic poetica. I suppose he’s not much different from William Shakespeare who’s still being accused of being incapable of writing Shakespeare. I suspect, but probably won’t be around to prove it, that Cummings will be read, apprehended, and appreciated long after many of he so-called Major Poets of the 20th century will be curiosity items for English doctoral candidates in search of a thesis.

Yasuo Fujitomi performed "The Elephant and the Butterfly" in Japanese to an audience of 120 in Urawa city near Tokyo on May 11, 1997. Natsuko Kotake played the piano and became the butterfly. Yasuo played and read a double role as narrator and the elephant. There were also slides projected, seven drawn by himself.

Kurt Harris writes: "I recently read a book entitled Tuesdays with Morrie, and a portion of ‘my father moved through dooms of love’ was quoted therein. The book is a biographical piece on Brandeis professor Morrie Stein’s final months of life, and his son read the Cummings poem at Morrie’s funeral." The book is by Mitch Albom (Doubleday, 1997).

Gerry Locklin was one of four recipients of the Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievements Award at California State University, Long Beach, for 1996–97.

Michael Welch reports the sighting of a Cummings poem set to music on Michael Hedges’ 1990 compact disc, Taproot (Windham Hill Records 1093). The song entitled "I Carry Your Heart" is a beautiful version of "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in / my heart)" (Complete 766), featuring Hedges on vocals, with harmony vocals by Graham Nash and David Crosby. Tragically, Michael Hedges was killed in a car accident in northern California in December of 1997.

An article on "she being Brand" by Karen Alkalay-Gut appeared in JML 20, 2 (Winter 1996): 254–258, entitled "Sex and the Single Engline."

Taimi Olsen gave birth to a baby boy, Charles Blayne Beeson, 18 June 1997. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 4 ounces.

Spring’s assistant editor, Michael Dylan Welch, is a featured interview subject in the 1998 edition of Poet’s Market (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books), page 336.

Liveright’s Victor Schmalzer alerted us to a number of style manuals using "e. e." instead of "E. E.," and so far we’ve contacted the Chicago Manual of Style, which has replied with its pledge of cooperation.

Noburu Tanikawa writes that Yasuo Fujitomi edited Selected Poems of E. E. Cummings in Japanese, with some translations by Noburu, who has also published Please Accept E. E. Cummings in a private edition.

Martin Heusser published "Transcendental Modernism: E. E. Cummings’ Moon Poems" in Aspects of Modernism, eds. Andreas Fischer, et al., Gunter Narr, Verlag Tübingen, 1997, 56–73; and I Am My Writing: The Poetry of E. E. Cummings, Stauffenburg Verlag, 1997, Germany. We’re arranging to have the book reviewed for our next issue.

Allen Krantz and Janet Eilber performed "anyone lived" at Occidental College, Los Angeles, November 7 and 8, 1997.

The Blue Heron Theatre will stage Steve Scotti’s "e.e.!" in April of 1998 in the Northeast and Long Island. We have requested "E.E.!" but so far haven’t heard.

We are organizing two panels on Cummings for the American Literature Association conference in San Diego, May 28–31, 1998. Slated to present papers are Claudia Desblaches, Michael Welch, Taimi Olsen, Rajeev Kumar Kinra, Millie N. Kidd, John Gill, and Isabelle Alfandary. John Gill and Taimi Olsen will serve as panel chairs. As usual, we hope to publish some of these papers in a future issue of Spring.

E. E. Cummings has been elected to The Poets’ Corner in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. Cummings, along with cohonoree Louise Bogan (1897–1970), was inducted during a public vespers service on Sunday, October 26, 1997. Selections from the work of both poets were read by Grace Schulman, William Jay Smith, Dana Gioia, and Rachel Hadas. Following the service, the Very Reverend Harry H. Pritchett, Jr., dean of the cathedral, dedicated the stones commemorating the poets.

E. E. Cummings’ stone is inscribed with the words, "A world of made / is not a world of born" from his sonnet, "pity this busy monster,manunkind" (Complete 554). Spring #7 will have a complete report of this event.

We have heard from Barbara Lindtner that Jere Knight passed away in June of 1996. Barbara is married to Jere’s son Jeff.

We mourn the passing of Judah Stampfer, New York City, a longtime friend of the Friedmans and supporter of the Society. Poet, critic, novelist, teacher: he shall be missed.

Aaron Kramer, poet and translator, died on April 7, 1997, at the age of 75. He has contributed to the Journal several times, and also appears in this issue. His obit appeared in The New York Times, Saturday, April 12, 1997.

* * *

"ends are beginnings with their hats on"

—E. E. Cummings

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