SOURCE: Webster, Michael. “E. E. Cummings: Romantic Ideology and Technique.” In Reading Visual Poetry after Futurism: Marinetti, Apollinaire, Schwitters, Cummings, pp. 111-40. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

In the following essay, Webster examines the effect of Cummings's typographical experimentation on his Romantic themes.

Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

—E. E. C. (CP [The Complete Poems] 223)

A “simultaneity of the radically disparate” describes the poetry of E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) rather well. Critics have long been puzzled by the simultaneous presence in his poetry of romantic sentiments and experimental typography. Early critics like R. P. Blackmur often deplored the romanticism (calling it “incorrigibly sentimental”) while they ignored or suppressed the typographical “peculiarities.” The following is from Blackmur's 1930 essay, “Notes on E. E. Cummings' Language:”

… extensive consideration of these peculiarities today has very little importance, carries almost no reference to the meaning...