PARTISAN REVIEW
Try reading the following, bye. e. cummings:
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a) s
w
(e 100 )
k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
aThe) ;1
S
rIvInG
eA
!p:
(r
eringt(
0-
.gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea (be )rran (com) gi( e) ngly
,grasshopper;
a
97
Did you get it? Of course, translated back to "grasshopper who as we
look up now gathering GRASSHOPPER to the leap arriving grass–
hopper to rearrangingly become grasshopper," it loses something. A
certain activity - of grasshopper, of poet, of perception, to which
ordinary "reading" is inadequate. Not for nothing does Cummings
imply by the title's anagram that this one of God's creatures, despite
or because he is common as the grass he hops in, is a prophet-mes–
senger-sage. Not for nothing does the grasshopper end in a semi–
colon; set to go again. Obviously, this poem is a paradigmatic fore–
runner, or forejumper, of concrete poetry.
And what is concrete poetry? A global postwar movement.
Sources in Mallarme, Nietzsche, Apollinairt:, Joyce-Pound- Cum–
mings, modern linguistics, industrial design, communications and
computer technology, Gestalt psychology. And what is concrete poem?
Concrete poem is Object. "Useful Object." Concrete poem equals
poem/ picture; poem/ sound; poem/ sequence in time; poem/
structure in space. Concrete poem takes qualities inherent in all poems,
and brings them from periphery of literary consciousness to center
