E. E. Cummings Read online

  11 “The amazing vulgarity”: Ibid, p. 19. Letter dated May 4, 1917.

  12 “Last night I sat”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 26. Letter dated May 1917.

  13 “the finest girls”: Ibid., p. 17. This is the last letter from the Hôtel du Palais, dated June 4, 1917.

  14 aristocratic cutups: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 90.

  15 “show those dirty Frogs”: Ibid., p. 146.

  16 “Perhaps the real heroes”: Dyer, The Missing of the Somme, p. 53.

  17 “Since 1916, the fear of gas”: “Robert Graves,” Wikipedia.

  18 “I hope M. le Censor”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 29. Letter dated July 7, 1917.

  19 “This made me angry”: Ibid., p. 30. Letter dated July 7, 1917.

  5. THE ENORMOUS ROOM

  1 “Death is not an adventure”: Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p. 54.

  2 “J’aime beaucoup les français”: Cummings, The Enormous Room, p. 19.

  3 “An uncontrollable joy”: Ibid., p. 23.

  4 “I fell on my paillasse”: Ibid., p. 60.

  5 “You can’t imagine, Mother mine”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 38. Letter dated October 1, 1917.

  6 “Pardon me, Mr. President”: Cummings, The Enormous Room, pp. xi–xiv.

  7 he had lost his smile: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 159.

  8 “The artist keeps his eyes”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 54. Letter dated September 11, 1918.

  9 “His neck was exactly”: Cummings, The Enormous Room, p. 56.

  10 “Your father turned”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 111.

  11 “He uses some new alloys”: Ibid., p. 122.

  12 “my mattress resembled an island”: Ibid., p. 62.

  13 “splendid comrades”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 40. Letter dated Nov. 1917.

  14 “Indeed for the first time”: Cummings, The Enormous Room, p. 71.

  15 “You know Cornelius Vanderbilt”: Ibid., p. 73.

  16 “he knew probably less”: Ibid., p. 84.

  17 “He makes us see and smell”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 223.

  6. GREENWICH VILLAGE: ELAINE AND NANCY

  1 “independent republic of Greenwich Village”: Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams, p. 1.

  2 after an accident: Milford, Savage Beauty, p. 18.

  3 And they wrote about it: Schulman, Romany Marie, p. 11.

  4 When she decided to sleep with them: Milford, Savage Beauty, p. 198.

  5 was also having an affair: Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams, pp. 124–5. This triangle between Reed, O’Neill, and Louise Bryant was the subject of the 1981 Warren Beatty movie, Reds.

  6 “ST—the world, money, Freud”: Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, restricted folders of E. E. Cummings, 1 of 1 204.

  7 “the first time I saw Elaine”: Houghton Library restricted papers of EEC.

  8 “What an unsettled luncheon”: Watson, The Edge of the Woods, p. 83.

  9 “Those of us who weren’t”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 193.

  10 “I see E. not as she is”: Houghton Library. Cummings archive Bms Am 1892.7 (198).

  11 “there’s no way out”: Ibid.

  12 “If I hadn’t changed”: Ibid., folder 3.

  13 “go in, oh please”: Ibid. (189.7 198).

  14 “I didn’t want to possess her”: Ibid.

  15 “Out of a very ancient wheelmine”: Cummings de Forêt, Charon’s Daughter, p. xi.

  16 “One solitary recollection”: Ibid., p. xi.

  17 “I am essentially an artist”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 223.

  18 “I love her more than anything”: Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. Cummings archive Bms Am 827—from folders.

  7. ANNE BARTON AND JOSEPH STALIN

  1 “Homo duplex”: William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 234.

  2 “before breakfast self”: Houghton Library, Harvard College Library (restricted), Bms Am 1892.7 (217).

  3 “fortune does us neither good nor evil”: Ibid.

  4 “You can only see”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, pp. 285–6.

  5 “Myself seems to be”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 111. Letter to Rebecca Cummings, dated September 13, 1926.

  6 “When two brakemen jumped”: Cummings, i: six nonlectures, p. 12. Cummings interviewed the brakemen the next day.

  7 “My sister and I entered”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, pp. 304–5.

  8 the classy writer Hazel Hawthorne: Morrie and Hazel were benevolent fixtures of my childhood. Hazel in particular became a babysitter for me and my brother some nights and a few weekends after we had moved to the suburbs. One Valentine’s Day when my parents had gone off somewhere leaving us with Hazel, a huge card with an intricate set of springs and feathers was delivered to me. She was a friend.

  9 “As she quickly rose”: Watson, The Edge of the Woods, p. 99.

  10 “Think that I am not a bit the sort”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 225.

  11 “We knew from Freud”: Wittels, Freud and the Child Woman, p. 38.

  12 “They had been stewed”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 323.

  13 “lucid madness”: Ibid., p. 226.

  14 “every now and then”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 254.

  15 “Inexorably has a magic wand”: Cummings, Eimi, p. 8.

  16 “The whole trouble with you”: Ibid., p. 51.

  17 She got drunk and embarrassed Cummings: Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. Cummings archive, Bms Am 176.

  18 Hart Crane had died: Crane had been traveling with Cowley’s ex-wife Peggy. The way my father told it, Crane had burst into the beauty parlor where Peggy was having her hair done, saying he had to talk. Peggy had dismissed him. He had left the room and thrown himself overboard.

  8. EIMI AND MARION MOREHOUSE

  1 “I have been”: Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931), p. 875.

  2 “Are the Russian people happy?”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, pp. 284–5. Interview with Don Brown in Paris, in 1931.

  3 “Cummings went to the Soviet Union”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 355.

  4 “subhuman communist superstate”: Madison Smartt Bell, introduction to Eimi, by E. E. Cummings, p. xii.

  5 “next: in the very diningroom”: Cummings, Eimi, p. 63.

  6 “He avoids the cliché”: William Carlos Williams, “Lower Case Cummings,” The Harvard Wake 5 (Spring 1946), p. 22.

  7 “i is small”: Bell, introduction to Eimi, p. xiii.

  8 “a four hundred page garland”: Karl Shapiro, “The Bohemian,” The Harvard Wake 5 (Spring 1946), p. 45.

  9 “If only Cummings would condescend”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 298.

  10 “As soon as you”: Cummings, Journals from the Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Restricted 3 of 7, p. 190.

  11 “During one of your early”: Cummings, Journals from the Houghton Library, Harvard College Library.

  12 “the curse becomes a blessing”: Ibid.

  13 “When you refused to let her”: Ibid.

  14 “Marion’s my new pride”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 123.

  15 “I only wish I”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 347.

  16 “There in Africa”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 27.

  9. NO THANKS

  1 “In the previous dozen years”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 350.

  2 Stewart was the literary representative: Bennington class roster, 1935, Bennington College Library Archive.

  3 “We have been able to avoid”: Letter, Robert Devore Leigh to Joseph Willits, March 12, 1935. Bennington College archives c. Oceana Wilson and Joe Tucker.

  4 overthrowing the rules and the rulers: Bennington, Vermont, is dominated by a plinth—the Bennington Needle or the Bennington Monument—erected on the highest point in town in memory of the soldiers of the American Revolution.

  5 “I too was at Bennington”: Pound/Cummings, p
. 138.

  6 “Three or four times a week”: Brockway, Bennington College, p. 78.

  7 In the official Bennington version: Bennington College Archives, Crossett Library.

  8 “Mr. Cummings’ poetry”: The Bennington Banner, April 27, 1935; courtesy of the Bennington College Archives.

  9 “E. E. Cummings is far more incomprehensible”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 309.

  10 “Once with The Enormous Room”: Ibid.

  11 “so slightly acknowledged”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 406.

  12 “My poems are essentially pictures”: Reef, E. E. Cummings, p. 99.

  13 “The poems to come”: Cummings, Collected Poems 1922–1938, n.p.

  14 “This is the poetry of a man”: Ibid., p. 100.

  15 “When Cummings writes”: Harvard Wake 5 (Spring 1946), p. 61.

  10. EZRA POUND AND SANTA CLAUS

  1 A letter from the Yale admissions committee: The applicant was my uncle Thomas Winternitz whose father, my grandfather, had been the dean of Yale School of Medicine and was ousted as a result of anti-Semitism.

  2 “relinquishing self-expression”: Houghton Library restricted material.

  3 “It resembles armour”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 390.

  4 “Dew yew figger”: Pound/Cummings, p. 143.

  5 “Insteroot (ov Awts n Lers)”: Ibid., p. 146.

  6 “I saw him in New York”: Ibid., p. 145.

  7 “attractively curly-headed”: Pound/Cummings, p. 138.

  8 “a thick and sanguinary steak”: Ibid.

  9 “We don’t know if he’s a spy”: Ibid., p. 139.

  10 “I find poor Pound”: Ibid.

  11 The letter is an almost incomprehensible jumble: Ibid., p. 152.

  12 “Spring is coming”: Ibid., p. 156.

  13 “Ars longa”: The complete aphorism by Hippocrates, which might well have been a Cummings credo, reads:

  Art is long,

  life is short,

  opportunity fleeting,

  experiment dangerous,

  judgment difficult.

  14 “Marion’s been in the hospital”: Pound/Cummings, p. 167.

  15 “I like getting letters”: Ibid., p. 168.

  16 “changed her clothes”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 166.

  11. REBECCA AND NANCY

  1 “the genuine 101%”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 158. Letter dated March 29, 1941.

  2 When I Was a Little Girl: The book’s dedication reads: “Written for John and Mary and their children and children’s children.”

  3 “an extraordinary human being”: Letter to Hildegarde Watson. Letter dated January 22, 1947.

  4 “Nancy was early treated”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 413. This is from one of many interviews Kennedy had with Nancy—she was as open as possible with him and any account of her life must be heavily indebted to Kennedy’s extraordinary and timely work. I stand on his shoulders. Any presumption that this book could have been written without his magnificent research and his biography is entirely my own obfuscation.

  5 “deb delights, London 1938”: Cummings de Forêt, Charon’s Daughter, p. 7.

  6 “New York 1943”: Ibid., p. 9.

  7 “Marion, for whatever reasons”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 416.

  8 Santa Claus: The Harvard Wake 5 (Spring 1946), pp. 10–19.

  9 “he pushed all the tears”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 174.

  10 “Nancy and I had a wonderful time”: Ibid., p. 309.

  11 “I knew a couple of lemmings”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 267.

  12. “I THINK I AM FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU”

  1 “There are three roofers”: Letter dated April 5, 1952. Houghton Library Archive. Collection of William James correspondence.

  2 “seemed extraordinary, like a bell”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 417.

  3 “goodbye dear & next time”: Cummings de Forêt, Charon’s Daughter, n.p.

  4 “Always the pictures came first”: Ibid.

  5 “the ferryman of the Styx”: Bernard Stehle lecture at AIAC in 2006.

  6 Nancy blurted out her fears: This is the story Nancy told her close friend Robert Cabot—a story Cabot told me in 2011. The story Nancy had previously told Richard Kennedy and which he used in his biography leaves out her confession of love.

  7 “I hope never to forget the force”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 498.

  8 “it seems to me that she is real”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 474.

  9 “While part of me is her tragic”: Ibid., p. 472.

  10 “You know how hard it is”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 429.

  11 “thank you a millionmillion times”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 214.

  12 “Anyhow: from my standpoint”: Ibid., p. 263.

  13 “Across that vacuous room”: Robert Cabot, The Isle of Khería (Kingston, NY: McPherson & Company), p. 196.

  14 “Perhaps some day”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 269.

  15 “It was a treasure of a place”: Author’s interview with Robert Cabot, November 22, 2011.

  16 “We are as Kevin tried to say”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 533.

  17 “behaved in a hoity-toity fashion”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 474.

  18 “Your pluck was wonderful”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 268. Letter dated January 15, 1961.

  19 “You hated being made to showoff”: Ibid., p. 269. Letter dated Jan. 15, 1961.

  20 “Do you know at all”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 476.

  13. READINGS: A NEW CAREER

  1 “The poet is no tender slip”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 273. Letter dated Feb. 19, 1962.

  2 “as stiff as a mule”: Ibid., pp. 238–9. Letter dated December 8, 1954.

  3 “He was an enormously effective”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 447.

  4 “must confess”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 245. Letter dated April 8, 1955.

  5 three categories: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 128.

  6 “ ‘arthritis’—without or avec a soupcon”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 189. Letter not dated.

  7 “I always glimpse”: Ibid., p. 212. Letter dated 1949. This is a reference to the Odes of Horace who, in an ode refers to fleeting time, advancing age, and the disaster that devotion will not delay wrinkles.

  8 “What I generally experience”: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 512.

  9 “This invitation”: Norman, The Magic-Maker, p. 359.

  10 “received an Honour”: Pound/Cummings, p. 273. Letter dated April 22, 1950.

  11 “whar yu git sech ideas”: Ibid., pp. 283–4.

  12 the “firestorm” of anger: Sawyer-Lauçanno, E. E. Cummings, p. 482.

  13 “Cummings, the foe of tyranny”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 434.

  14 “what is extraordinary”: Ibid.

  15 “He had touched something deep”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 458.

  14. VICTORY AND DEFEAT

  1 “To a human being”: Cummings, Selected Letters, p. 274.

  2 “Marion would be in and out”: Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, p. 478.

  Bibliography

  Andrews, Kevin. Castles of the Morea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

  ———. The Flight of Ikaros: Travels in Greece During the Civil War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959.

  Bethell, John T. Harvard Observed: An Illustrated History of the University in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

  Brockway, Thomas P. Bennington College: In the Beginning. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 1981.

  Broyard, Anatole. Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir. New York: Crown, 1996.

  Cummings, E. E. Eight Harvard Poets. 1917; repr. Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou,

  ———. The Enormous Room. New York: Modern Library, 1998.

  ———. Eimi: A Journey Through Soviet Russia. New York: Liveright, 2007.


  ———. Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings. F. W. Dupee and George Stade, eds. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969.

  ———. Complete Poems, 1913–1922. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1923.

  ———. Fairy Tales. Illustrated by Meilo So. New York: Liveright, 1950.

  ———. Little Tree. Illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray. New York: Dragonfly Books, 1923.

  ———. Collected Poems, 1922–1938. New York: Liveright, 1963.

  ———. i: six nonlectures: the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1952–1953. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

  ———. Complete Poems, 1904–1962. George James Firmage, ed. New York: Liveright, 1991.

  Cummings de Forêt, Nancy. Charon’s Daughter. New York: Liveright, 1977.

  Dyer, Geoff. The Missing of the Somme. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

  Firmage, George. E. E. Cummings: A Bibliography. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1960.

  The Harvard Wake 5 (Spring 1946). Issue devoted to Cummings.

  Jinkinson, Roger. American Ikaros: The Search for Kevin Andrews. London: Racing House Press, 2010.

  Kayton, Bruce. Radical Walking Tours of New York City. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999.

  Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings. New York: Liveright/W. W. Norton, 1980.

  Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Another E. E. Cummings: A Mind-bending Selection of the Avant-Garde Cummings Poetry and Prose. New York: Liveright, 1998.

  Mason, Wyatt. “Make It Newish: E. E. Cummings, Plagiarism, and the Perils of Originality.” Harper’s Magazine, May 2005.

  Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: A Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York: Random House, 2002.

  Millard, Candice. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey. New York: Anchor Books, 2005.

  Mitchell, Joseph. Up in the Old Hotel. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

  Norman, Charles. The Magic-Maker: E. E. Cummings. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

  Pound, Ezra, and E. E. Cummings. Pound/Cummings: The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings. Edited by Barry Ahearn. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996.