num_pages: 266
description: From the outset of his career, E. E. Cummings considered himself a" Early on, it appeared that both Cummings's "twinobsessions" would be recognized. By the late 1920's, however, Cummings's reputation as a poet had eclipsed his reputation as a painter. Examining the early poetry and painting in the context of the aesthetic theories in Cummings's unpublished notes, Milton Cohen systematically reveals a complex and sometimes paradoxical portrait of the artist. PoetandPainter traces the four major aesthetic concerns ofCummings's early perception, three-dimensional form, motion, and the interrelations of the arts. As a preface to these concerns, Cohen discusses Cummings's budding, but unfulfilled, career as a painter and the philosophical underpinnings of his aesthetics. He concludes with aredefined profile of Cummings as poet, cerebral aesthetician, and lifelong painter. Cummings's cohesive structure of aesthetics provided him with anessential unifying element-a vehicle to cross-pollinate the techniques of his two media. The implication of Cohen's lucid study, concentrating onCummings's output between 1916 and 1927, extends to all of the poet'sworks.
language: English
title: Poet and Painter: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings's Early Work
titlecomplete: Poet and Painter: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings's Early Work
genres: Art
ratings_count: 6
publisher: Wayne State University Press