Cummings, Creative Courage, and the Importance of Protecting the Artist’s Right to Challenge the Status Quo – Brain Pickings“The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself. Cummings (October 1. September 3, 1. 96. He lived this tenet every day, on every line, and spent his entire career defending the basic creative freedom to dismantle the accepted order, the way things have always been done, in order to get to the heart of truth and beauty. Even at the height of his success, his spirit of rebellion was met with resistance so tremendous as to bleed into the absurd — a timeless and vivid caricature of what innovators and creative mavericks have contended with since the first human impulse to make art.
E. E. Cummings by Edward Weston (Photograph courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography)In the winter of 1. Academy of American Poets awarded 5. Cummings the annual $5,0. Talking Heads might say) “never for money, always for love.” But among the tragic traits of our individualistic and competitive culture is the impulse to tear down those who rise above the rest by attaining acclaim for their work, especially when there is financial gain. This is precisely what befell Cummings, as evidenced by a series of letters I discovered in the archives of the Academy of American Poets — the astonishing and astonishingly underutilized trove of cultural history that also gave us the acutely timely story of how the creative community stood up for Amiri Baraka when he was brutalized by police in 1. Portrait of Marie Bullock by Howard Chandler Christy, 1. Shortly after the fellowship announcement, Marie Bullock — the remarkable woman who founded the Academy of American Poets in 1. Hiding behind the pompous language of the letter writers is an overeducated version of today’s average internet troll, driven by the same psychology that Kierkegaard identified when he contemplated why haters hate in 1. Both letters were published in the Winter issue of The Lyric — the oldest American magazine dedicated to formal poetry, founded thirty years earlier in a conservative spirit and known for its antagonism to modernist verse. One, penned on New Year’s Day 1. Ohio physician named Earl Byrd. From snide remarks about Cummings’s visual art to sidewise jabs at James Joyce, this embittered and small- spirited missive is the fraud police personified; the voice of the status quo shrieking that an artist who has dared to innovate and challenge convention must be instantly excommunicated from the pantheon of Art. Illustration from Enormous Smallness, a picture- book about the life and genius of E. E. Cummings. Byrd writes: Dear Mrs. Woman Haters Production Information Studio: Columbia Production Number: 112 Release Date: 5/5/1934 Running Time: 19:18 Cast & Crew Producer(s): Jules White. In the winter of 1950, this tension between the forces of traditionalist dogma and creative bravery crescendoed when the Academy of American Poets awarded 56-year-old. Bullock,I address this bit of comment to you because you are the titular head of the “A. A. P.” I am aware that you, personaly . This is the third time in the past five years that an important prize for poetry has been given to a non- poet. The notorious Bellingen award for the pathetic mutterings of the paranoid Ezra Pound, then THE PUBLISHER’S NAT’L BOOK AWARD for the amorphous imagery of Carlos Williams, and now the, . I quote“And there’s a hundred million others,like all of you successfully ifdelicately gelded (or spaded)gentlemen and (ladies) — prettylittleliverpill”The man who could do this even once is not a poet. He was born outside the pale: He is congenitaly . I am glad to hear this: if any of the seven lively arts must suffer the intrusion of Cummings, let it be painting: I have never been deeply concerned about the destiny of painting. I am an old man; I take to heart what bits of hope I find, and these public coronations lose half their significance when I remember that while the Pyes and Cibbers were being officially ordained to the Laureateship, the real poets of England were lovingly, though obscurely, building the great temple of English poetry, and there are other consolations, not the least of which is right in your own bailiwick, I mean the enthusiastic response to the “LYRIC” and “THE LYRIC FOUNDATION” made possible by the devoted philanthropy of Virginia Kent Cummins, your 5th. Neighbor. So it seems to me our American poetry may be on the mend, and indeed, now that the stench of the maggoty putresence . Please give my regards to the six dissenting members of the panel that judged the Cummings book; God bless you merry gentlemen,May nothing you dismay. M. E. I was not a contestant for the prize. Byrd’s letter (left) and the first page of Coblentz’s letter (right)The other letter, written sixteen days earlier, came from Stanton A. Coblentz — a minor poet, prolific writer of questionable science fiction, and editor at a California publication called Wing, which dubbed itself “The House of Distinguished Poetry.” Coblentz — who repeatedly misspells the Academy’s founder’s name and, in his spirited mockery, misquotes Cummings’s verses without so much as bothering to heed the poet’s intended spelling and punctuation — writes: Dear Mrs. Such work is inchoate, perverse, vicious when it is not merely meaningless. Such work represents the sad effluvia of an addled mind. And I do not hesitate to state unqualifiedly that any mind that in all sincerity accepts such work as poetry is also addled. And the mind that accepts such work as poetry, but does not do so in all sincerity, is worse addled; it is corrupt. If I have spoken severely, it is because I believe that severe speaking is the one thing left to bring back some semblance of fair play and fair thought to persons and organizations supposedly charged with helping poetry. Your Academy of Poetry, if I may dare to say so, represents a magnificent opportunity. And what are the sponsors of that opportunity doing with it. They are doing far, far worse than to throw away your thousands of dollars. They are using thousands of dollars to light the faggots whereby to burn poetry at the stake. It may be late in the day; but I assure you that, though the smoke even now is making an unholy stench, I shall spare no effort to raise an outcry against this sacrilege. And I believe I know others who will do likewise. Yours in sorrow,Stephen A. Coblentz. Coblentz, needless to point out, is entirely forgotten. Cummings is Cummings. Page from Enormous Smallness by Matthew Burgess, an illustrated tribute to E. E. Cummings. But the point here isn’t merely that haters will always hate — after all, they didn’t spare F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marie Curie, and even a beloved Zen master. The point — the heartening ending of the story — is what happened next. On January 1. 3, a man ten years Cummings’s junior named Alex Jackinson, founder of the Alex Jackinson literary agency and a great lover of poetry, addressed Coblentz and Byrd jointly in a three- page letter of uncommon rhetorical genius — a searing defense not only of Cummings, not only of poetry, but of all art and, above all, of the artist’s right and even the artist’s responsibility to break with tradition and continually conquer new frontiers of creativity. Alex Jackinson’s letter. Jackinson writes: Dear Stanton A. Coblentz and Doctor Earl Byrd; With the Winter issue of The Lyric, I received copies of letters sent by you to Mrs. Hugh Bullock, raking her over the coals for the Academy of American Poets award to e e cummings. I was not happy about the award, either. Personally, I would have bestowed the laurel upon Joseph Joel Keith, or some other up- and- coming poet. In my opinion awards are infinitely more important at the start of a career, not some twenty years after recognition has been won. But both your communication went beyond merely presenting dissenting opinions; they were calculated attacks on modern poetry as such, and that is quite a different matter. Mr. As a reader of Wings, I am familiar with your oft- repeated stand. You are an uncompromising traditionalist who believes passionately in rhymed, orderly, classical verse. You invoke the Gods to bring back “Shelly and Blake and Milton, Poe and Keats”. Well, who could object? But who knows in what vein the Old Masters would interpret our unique, glitteringly appealing and repellent guys- and- dolls age? Poetry — living, not museum- piece poetry, must reflect the period in which it is written. War and chaos have plagued the world for quite a long time, but each epoch creates its own special pulse- beat for the artists to interpret. If our Freud- fraud, skyscraper- billboard- ad period is to reflect itself in poetry (and why shouldn’t it be?) the jangled idioms of cummings and . You go on to say: “I am told that he (cummings) also paints a little. I am glad to hear this; if any of the seven lively arts must suffer the intrusion of cummings, let it be painting: I have never been deeply concerned with the destiny of painting.” There is a closer link between the arts than you might care to admit, Doctor. Painting (like poetry) was stagnating in shallow and murky pools when the Impressionists burst upon the scene with vivid, un- chained hues. How the entrenched N. A.’s railed — but to no avail. Is painting the poorer for it that the museums have been forced to add a colorful Modernist wing? Mr. In last autumn’s issue of your fine magazine, you ran a piece in which you bemoaned that the tidal wave (of modern poetry) was not stopped when the break in the dike first appeared. How pathetically naive! What was the state of poetry — native, not library poetry, when the Imagists, in necessary rebellion, poured over the wall? Glory to Harriet Monroe for giving the insurgents a voice which is still heard. Oh, those refreshing sound- colors of Sandburg, Frost, Lindsay — and, of course, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Wallace, Stevens, Millay, William Rose Benet, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Genevieve Taggard. The list is endless. To be sure, much of the “new poetry” was brash and unintelligible. That part will not endure. But most of it was original, intransigent, vital, inevitable and cannot be excluded from any comprehensive anthology of American verse. It is, in fact, about the only poetry worth speaking of. Three. Stooges. net : : Three Stooges Quotes (9. Released. Episode Title. Quote. Said By. 19. SOUP TO NUTS, featuring Ted Healy and His Stooges? Ain't ya got no shimmy shirt? Ain't ya got no petti- skirt? Boo fly, ain't ya cold?? You know, I was thinking of something else. What'd'ya think happens? Then we'll bring in an interpreter to go over it!! They never did anything for me! Chairman, three gentlemen wait without. What'd he ever do for us! Great big, giant, green canaries!!! We're mighty proud of you, you've done a wonderful thing for humanity, and when we leave here, we're goin' right down to the president's office and.. But you wouldn't know a thing about that, would you? Larry's a minor, he's 4. Moe, Larry, the cheese!!! Curly! Woo- woo- woo- woo- woo- woo!!! 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Every time we get to that inch by inch part something always happens. Pal?! Moe. 19. 44- 1. NO DOUGH BOYS, featuring Moe, Larry and Curly. When you didn't know what you were talkin' about, you really had somethin'! I saw him with my eyes, I heard him with my ears, and his trap got me by the tail!? Go out there and help him! I hope you have a nice lo- o- ong sleep.? Utter a few adjectives! Positively, wrong number! NOISY, featuring Shemp Howard (Solo). Ether the bottle or the hammer. Quiet, quiet little darling, quiet.. WANNA HOME, featuring Moe, Larry and Curly. If I'm going to work like a horse, I'm gonna eat like one. Curly. You know, it's lucky they got a beautiful house where we can all live. And I get paid for it, too.? See, you can't go wrong with Moe! Has the deer a little doe? Duh- blah- goo- gah- duh- yaa..! There goes Shemp with a right upper- cut. There goes Shemp with a haymaker! Use this, it's bigger. We're not even married.! The mortar the merrier! 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It's good for headaches? We're going around the world on our wits!! Yeah, we're devout cowards! After all, it's rabbit stew! I'm gonna have a stroke! Yeah, I know where it belongs. I don't know if it's half empty or half full. We make such material available in an effort to advance awareness and understanding of the issues involved. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 1. US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 1. U. S. C. Section 1. For more information please visit: http: //www. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission directly from the copyright owner.
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