dumbfoundry

Is That a Poem? The case for E.E. Cummings. [US]:

In 1957, on television's Nitebeat, Mike Wallace asked William Carlos Williams if he thought that E.E. Cummings' poem "(im)c-a-t(mo) / b,i;l: e" was really a poem. (Television was different back then.) Williams said no. Maybe the question was too blunt; maybe the poet considered this print ideogram of a motionless cat too juvenile. But if William Carlos Williams, himself a leading experimental poet of the time, was not able to recognize that outburst of phonemes and punctuation marks as poetry, what hope was there for the average readers of the time—"mostpeople," as Cummings liked to call them—not to mention all the folks residing in Televisionland? [...]

Billy Collins on E.E. Cummings.

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 11:41 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.