60
PARTISAN REVIEW
said she" to the epic sweep of: "The grass was gone for miles around
Where Lil's white arse had bumped the ground"; or the hackneyed
double entendre of poem 134 (the breaking in of a new car) with the
rich imagery and invention of "My Handy Man." Even the serious sex
poems are corrupted by prurience, sicklied o'er with sentimentality. They
stem not from the great stream of the tradition, but from the minor
tributary of cheap burlesque; they are more concerned with exhibition
than enjoyment--like the strip-teaser with one eye on the censors and
the cops in the baek row.
The satires, which together with the sex p<?ems are largely re–
sponsible for Cummings' popular reputation, very rarely deserve the
name. They are more often bits of sarcasm, fancy invective, and nose–
thumbings. The real fun we get from reading the best of them is derived
not from their success as p<?ems, but from the exhibition of a clever
(and potentially serious) poet deliberately pointing his sophistications
with vulgarities, his poetic language with gutter slang.
It
is the bald trick
of incongruity-a popular one in burlesque, and is supported by many
of the common devices. This one, for example, of the censored rhyme
(cf. the ballad "Sweet Violets") :
every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
or the elaborate pun:
a myth is as good as a smile
...
. . .
entitled a wraith's
progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged
or for closing lines the classic anti-climax of nonsense:
and
it isn't snowing snow you know
it's snowing buttercups
for a bad cigar is a woman
but a gland is only a gland)
Now there is no possible objection to either nonsense or doggerel when
given and taken as such, though one may well dislike to have it sand–
wiched in with serious poems. The trouble here lies in the ambiguity.
Apparently Cummings has cultivated the confusion of incongruities for
so long that he himself is rarely certain to what degree or in what kind
he wants to be serious. Similarly, he slips so easily into the jargon of
newspaper, stage and street that he perfectly blunts the edge of what
was meant to be indignation or bitterness. Thus, in one of his best and
serious satires, the lines
obey says toc, submit says tic
Eternity's a Five Year Plan
give the effect of cant. The same triviality results in poem 214, a love
ballad after the manner of Villon, which almost succeeds in overcoming
its defects. In this case the jargon is that of musical comedy lyrics after
Cole Porter or Kaufman.
i
am a birdcage without any bird
a collar looking for a dog, a kiss
