[New-Poetry] cummings, grammaticality

[Joseph Duemer]

Alex, I have a lot of sympathy for your anti-language-legislation position.
That's why I mentioned dialects & alternative grammars in a previous post.
But we expect poets, in most circumstances, to be literate in sophisticated
ways, or at least working toward such sophistication rather that finding
excuses for carelessness & ignorance. In fact, most educated users of a
language are multi-dialectical & can switch registers & dialects easily &
naturally for effect, even inside a sentence. My point about Cummings is
that he was a highly sophisticated user of language in both English & French
& that his distortions & substitutions & shifts from high to low diction are
onily possible because of that sophistication. It offends me to hear it
suggested that Cummings, who wrote sonnets & ballads & other traditional
forms (though usually with a twist, was a casual or sloppy user of language.
He was not. Quite the opposite, in fact. Here, to take just one example from
memory, Cummings displaces the order of the grammatical units of modern
English in his sentences in order to suggest an earlier diction, but it is
as precise & clear as anything you can imagine. He draws on an older form of
the language in order to write a particular sort of modern poem. The use of
"be" for instance was common in English through the 17th century & still
occurs in some dialects. A poet working without such knowledge is, at least,
putting herself at a disadvantage. The idea that such knowledge stifles
"creativity" is one of the most pernicious misconceptions of American
culture.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer. [. . . .]



On 12/28/06, Alexander Dickow <alexdickow9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Joseph,
> Yes, I have read Cummings. Though not in any great
> quantity. I'm inclined to believe you're probably
> correct, but also that these terms
> grammatical/ungrammatical might not be so useful after
> all. How about sociolinguistic norms, ie of the white,
> educated middle class? Grammatical or not, I'd say
> Cummings successfully writes his way out of these, on
> occasion.
> Of course, I don't know what those "norms" are either,
> but that's an old problem, isn't it? But there's
> something about what I call "language legislation"
> that bothers me -- maybe that's because I've been
> thoroughly soaked/steeped in the French tradition,
> which happens to be terribly rife with it (see the
> Academie Francaise, c17th century).
> Amicalement,
> Alex
>
>
> Joseph wrote:
> Have you people read Cummings? He is entirely
> grammatical. He makes
> interesting, intentional substitutions of one part of
> speech for
> another,
> but none of his work would makes sense without
> readers' innate
> understanding
> of grammar. To say that Cummings is ungrammatical is
> to misunderstand
> both
> Cummings & grammar. Cummings, buy the way, was steeped
> in the
> traditions of
> Anglo-American poetry & in particular the very
> exacting tradition of
> the
> sonnet. To read Cummings without knowing this is to
> completely miss
> what he
> is about. I defy anyone to post a single sentence from
> Cummings that is
> not
> grammatical.
>
> www.alexdickow.net/blog/
>
>   les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
>   merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet
>
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>



-- 
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
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