Poet and Painter: Aesthetics of E.E.Cummings's Early Work

From the outset of his career, E. E. Cummings considered himself a
" Early on, it appeared that both Cummings's "twin
obsessions" 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 Examining the early poetry and painting in the context of the aesthetic theories in Cummings's unpublished notes, Milton Cohen systematically reveals a complex and sometimes paradoxical portrait of the artist.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 of
Cummings'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 a
redefined profile of Cummings as poet, cerebral aesthetician, and lifelong painter. Cummings's cohesive structure of aesthetics provided him with an
essential unifying element-a vehicle to cross-pollinate the techniques of his two media. The implication of Cohen's lucid study, concentrating on
Cummings's output between 1916 and 1927, extends to all of the poet's
works.