142
PARTISAN REVIEW
in a poem of his (and about it):
"It
is even in prose. I am a real
poet."
It
is unfortunate that Mr. Hall's more demanding concerns led
him to doff his characteristic virtues and put on a subject and a style
toward which he never really warms.
The problem of adding to an irrevocably established and per–
manently shaped
oeuvre
should not, under most conditions, prove
to be a difficult one. Yet for almost any book that E. E. Cummings
could now produce the difficulties would tend to increase; and for
his new collection, they prove almost catastrophic. The current
volum~
contains a poem of each of his most familiar sorts: little sighing
aper~us
and more wry observations dripping down the page, schema–
tically constructed strophic lyrics, blocky, rhetorical sonnets of a generally
cheerful mien (with final couplets like "-do lovers love? why then
to heaven with hell / whatever sages say and fools, all's well"), and
the like. 95
Poems
is a weak book, containing fewer interesting or
charming poems than
XAIPE
of eight years ago, and reflecting credit
on its author only by demonstrating that his acknowledged and familiar
corpus of work can withstand such additions. Two or three poems only
(numbers 34, 35 and 52, notably) might be said to deserve inclusion
in the volumes of selected Cummings that most of us would like to
prepare for ourselves. As for the rest, it is filled with disturbing as–
surances of the truth of what we have suspected for a long time, namely,
that Mr. Cummings's view of the world will no longer do. The diction
that served well enough once to embrace and enfold "olaf glad and
big" and the not unsage advice of "the way to hump a cow is not"
has worn through to the simplistic tatters below. "Thanksgiving (1956)"
ends as
uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps "i'm busy right now"
so rah-rah-rah democracy
let's all be thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)
Even as a "poetic" response to the Hungarian revolt, this shadow of
a posture can only embarrass. That number 77 in this collection is
really Cummings, however, is hard to believe: "i am a little church
