Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings Ed. F. W. Dupee and George Stade New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1969. Cummings' letters are written in his usual amusing, typographically inventive, idiosyncratic, and allusive yet straightforward style. Early letters show Cummings' rebellion agaist his father, his interest in Freud and Krazy Kat, and his efforts to emancipate himself from conventional thinking. For example, he advises his sister on May 3, 1922: "NEVER TAKE ANYONE'S WORD FOR ANYTHING" (84). Cummings' verbal and typewriterly pyrotechniques often act to shield his private emotions. The most unguarded of the letters are written to his friends J. Sibley and Hildegarde Watson; the showiest and most obscure are to his poetic mentor Ezra Pound. Unfortunately, this book is no longer in print, but it is available in many libraries. You may also be able to purchase a copy at used book seach sites like abebooks.com. We reprint below a sample from one letter.  [At right: frontispiece photo  "EEC 1952 (Marion Morehouse Cummings)"]

To his aunt Jane, March 11, 1935 (on the difficulties of setting up No Thanks):

am fighting—forwarded and backed by a corps of loyal assistants—to retranslate 71 poems out of typewriter language into linotype-ese.  This is not so easy as one might think;consider,if you dare,that whenever a typewriter "key" is "struck" the "carriage" moves a given amount and the "line" advances recklessly or individualistically.  Then consider that the linotype(being a gadget)inflicts a preestablished whole—the type "line"—on every smallest part;so that the words,letters,punctuation marks &(most important of all)spaces-between-these various elements,awake to find themselves rearranged automatically "for the benefit of the community" as politicians say.  Oddly,this malforming or standardizing process is technically called "justify"ing:thanks to it,the righthand margin of any printed page which has been "set" on a linotype has a neat artificial evenness—which the socalled world-at-socalled-large considers indispensable forsooth.  Ah well;you should see the army of the Organic marching against Mechanism with 10,000th-of-an-inch(or whatever)"hair-spaces";you should watch me arguing for two and a half hours(or some such)over the distance between the last letter of a certain word and the comma apparently following that letter but actually preceeding the entire next word;you should hear my printer's blasts against his "operator"(as is called the Slave of the Linotype)when said unfortunate playfully smashes the machine while "he's thinking of giving Rockyfeller a bomb or something"(like all "operators",or all that I've met,this bird is a communist).  But something tells me we'll succeed — ! (Letters 140-141)

A letter from EEC to Ezra Pound, page 1 (1935; Beinecke Library, Yale University)
A letter from EEC to Ezra Pound, page 2
A letter from EEC to Ezra Pound, page 3

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