TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE POETRY OF E.E. CUMMINGS

The most conspicuous quality of Cummings’s poetry is their technical originality. It has been pointed out by numerous critics that among the American poets, with the exception of Vladimir Nabokov, Cummings has most effectively expanded the domain of diction and syntax. His jugglery with words is almost unparalleled. It is mainly as a result of his technical improvisation that he is called an ultra-modern poet. Cummings once remarked, ‘The artist’s country is inside him.’ It shows that he would abide by his own rules rather than letting his verse be governed by traditional, jargon-ridden features. His innovative experimentations with language does not aim at bewildering the readers but to evoke a proper setting for his message.

     Among his experimentations the most important is the use of the lowercase i. Critics have split upon rocks to come to a unanimous thought about the employment of lowercase personal pronoun. Some critics consider it as Cummings’s desire to turn conventional vocabulary and syntax upside down. Some claim that it was his protest against the self-exhibiting whim of the people. Some critics tell that Cummings was imitating the handyman his father employed to take charge of their summer home.

   Some of Cummings’s poems make use of the ‘pattern poetry’ where no adherence to rhyme or meter is maintained. They are arranged according to the thought of poet’s mind. This pattern was in vogue during the Elizabethan time. Cummings reintroduced this trope in the twentieth century. His poem ‘Little Tree’ suggests the shape of a Christian tree.

    Another noticing feature is his gift of word-coinage. Sometimes Cummings found the available words ill-equipped to describe his thought pattern. Therefore he adds new suffixes to existing word. His new words with novel suffixes such as ‘riverly’, ‘birdfully’, ‘downwardishly’ produce an intensity of perception. This novel usage also suggests his attempts to transgress the boundary of the mundane world and reach a transcendental world.

   Cummings played with typographical rhetoric. He introduces spaces within single word to add density to his thought. Sometimes he did not give space between two words to suggest the association of thought.

   Cummings’s various uses of parentheses are worth noticing. They are used sometimes for an interpolated comment or for the purpose of splitting words. In his ‘go(perpe)go’ (in No Thanks) we see a typographical juxtaposition. The parenthetical sentence is a surrealist collection of ‘perpetual adventuring particles’ showing the action of a muddled ant heap and an anteater getting his dinner. In his poem ‘Memorabilia’ we see the last two lines within parentheses that shows the poet’s separation from the materialistic society.

     Another technical innovation of Cummings’s poetry is his emphasis on the role of the reader. Much before the advent of Reader-Response school his verse evinced the way for getting the reader’s response. For example, his poem ‘in Just-’ invites the response of the reader to fill in the missing gaps.