In the following essay excerpt, Heyen reacts to critical evaluations of Cummings by other critics and calls "somewhere i have never travelled . . . " "among the finest and most profound poems on the theme of love ever written."

E. E. Cummings' 100 Selected Poems was published in 1959. This selection, which includes work from Tulips and Chimneys (1923) through Xaipe (1950), was made by Cummings himself. These were the poems, no doubt, that he considered his best and perhaps most representative. I'd like to talk about a few of the lyrics in this volume, and to move from them to critical considerations that they inevitably raise.

I am now three sentences deep into my talk and already almost forced to stop. For there is a sense in which, from Cummings' point of view, from the assumptions and visions of his life and life's work, poems do not inevitably raise critical considerations. Poems are...