honeydunce

happy birthday, e.e. cummings. one of my first & eternal inspirations.

His name was Edward Estlin Cummings – e.e. cummings to you, although Richard Kostelanetz, the prolific author and anthologist who brought Wednesday’s meeting together, sneers at what he feels is the inappropriate compulsive lower-casing of poet and painter Cummings’s name.

Poet and painter?

Most people who love the poetry do not know that Cummings was also, all his life, a painter. In fact, in a mock Q&A in the catalogue of a 1945 exhibition of his canvases and drawings (read out loud by Kostelanetz to the gathering). Cummings put it this way:

Why do you paint? / For exactly the same reason I breathe … / And how long have your written? / As long as I can remember. / I mean poetry. / So do I. / Tell me, doesn’t your painting interfere with your writing? / Quite the contrary: they love each other dearly … / They’re very different. / Very: one is painting and one is writing. / But your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. / Easy? / Of course — you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. / I never met him. / Who? / Everybody.

thanks to renee for reminding me.