1 All Blackmur quotations are from this essay. The essay originally appeared in the Hound and Horn, iv Jan.-March 1931), 163–192. When Blackmur reprinted it in The Double Agent (1935) he wrote in a footnote that “There would seem to be little modification of these notes necessary because of Eimi or the subsequent volumes of verse.” In a later review of 50 Poems, however, he apparently changed his mind somewhat: “But this reservation [regarding the vagueness of Cummings' language], formerly held to an extreme, does not now need to be; it is now but a cautionary reservation and applies to no more than half the new poems; for Mr. Cummings' practice has improved with his increasing interest, as it seems, in persuading his readers of the accuracy of the relationships which his words divulge” (Southern Rev., vii, 1941–42, 201–205). The fact still remains that he reprinted this essay in its original form once again in Language as Gesture (1952), and that it is also being reprinted widely today in various anthologies of literary criticism, and is, therefore, the lion in the path of any younger critic who wishes to discuss the virtues of Cummings' language. See, e.g., Robin E. Gajdusek, “… if you should wish a ring” (unpub. M.A. thesis, Columbia Univ., 1950); Robert E. Maurer, “E. E. Cummings: A Critical Study” (unpub. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1955) and “Latter-Day Notes on E. E. Cummings' Language,” Bucknell Rev., v (May 1955), 1–23; Louis Calvin Rus, “Structural Ambiguity in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings” (unpub. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1955); Rudolph Von Abele, “‘Only to Grow’: Change in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings,” PMLA, lxx (1955), 913–933. (Since this note was written, Blackmur's essay has been again reprinted in his Form and Value in Modern Poetry, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957.)
