Dan: "Perhaps, Richard--but after his initial success as a 'cubist' painter, though few contemporary artists paint themselves into that corner. Actually, Stein may have 'solved the problem' a decade or so earlier than e.e.c. (See this article on Stein [which I think pretty good although it doesn't convince me Stein's Tender Buttons are not hopelessly hermetic--bg].)"

Me: "I don't see Cummings as a cubist myself, though I guess he was in some of his things. He pioneered in visual poetry and infraverbal poetry (a central concern in the poetry that can be made of linguistic units smaller than words)."

Dan: "Cummings (and Dylan Thomas), great fun to read and significant in themselves if short on disciples,"

Me: "Sorry, no. Short on disciples certified by the American Academy of Poets, American Poetry Review, the New Yorker, Harvard and the New York Times only.

Dan: " . . .rarely seem stylistically influential beyond highschool--perhaps because they had such distinct voices that their influence might seem a taint, mere aping.'

Me: "True, especially with Cummings. This kept them from having immediate followers. When I took a course in college from Ann Stanford at Cal State Northridge in the seventies, she had us write a poem in emulation of some well-known poet, but wouldn't let us emulate Cummings. To the stasguards then and probably now, any on E who plays with the language typographically is a weak imitation of Cummings--because the stasguard doesn't understand what he was doing well enough to see how others could use his methods to make very different poems, the way Frost can be said to have made very different poems from Hardy's although he used Hardy's methods slavishly, or so it seems to me."

Dan: "Olson 'influenced' by cummings, Bob, as you claim in an earlier post? To get a typewriter? Cummings' visual innovations seem largely a pranksterish poke in the eye to readers who see 'difficulty' as necessary to 'real' poetry. (You want difficulty? Here you go."

Me: "That's what they seem to those with no understanding whatever of what he was doing, and hateful of any deviation from their norms."[Dan took me to be insulting him personally here; I took myself to be insulting the persons ignorant of Cummings's practice that I thought he was writing about. In any case, I had no qualms about insulting whomever it was who was insulting Cummings. Dan--no stasguard--re-entered the discussion without apparent ill-will after I explained that my insult wasn't directed at him. In fact, he invited me to explain Cummings to our group, which led to a commentary on his leaf poem that I'll post here tomorrow.--bg] Dan: "Olson's layout of the poem arises from a different--an auditory--motivation."

Me: "Cummings was, as far as I know, the first American poet significantly to use flow-breaks (gaps or spaces in lines) not resulting from standard lineation. His poetry thus served as a model for letting the needs of a poem decide where its words and letters would be on a page rather that a pre-set form, like the one even free verse to that time adhered to. Who knows what Olson knew of him, but it had to be helpful that at least one well-known poet was treating the page as an 'open field' for Olson, and all the others who now do this as a matter of course.

"Or did Pound precede Cummings in this area?

"Sure, the language poets eventually accepted Pound, the rightwinger, but it took a while, and they absorbed so much from him, they couldn't keep refusing to acknowledge him as a predecessor forever. But they still reject Cummings due to his politics because they also despise his poetic subjects--spring, love, snowflakes, etc.--and impassioned affirmations, and don't realize how much of what they do is from him."

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