Drafts from No Thanks (1935)

mOOn Over tOwns mOOn (Complete Poems 383)

Though this shows no draft work, it still captures the idiosyncrasies of Cummings' typewriter: MS Am 1892.5 (353), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Used with Permission, Copyright © by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r (Complete Poems 396)

First Extant Draft of r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, MS Am 1892.7 (121) folder 18, sheet 316, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Used with Permission, Copyright © by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust

Michael Webster's Transcription of Early Draft from 1892.7 (121) folder 18, sheet 316

E. E. Cummings, “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r analysis of poem,” typescript (Papers of E. E. Cummings, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, MSS 6246a, Special Collections, University of Virginia) (1935?), Used with Permission, Copyright © by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust

Corrected proof sheet for “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” (1958) that Cummings sent to Augusto de Campos and reproduced in facsimile in 40 POEM(A)S. 2nd. ed. Trans. Augusto de Campos. São Paulo: Brasilense, 1986, page 128, Used with Permission, Copyright © by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust

Juxtaposition of Typescript Edition and a "re-translation" into another font and font size

When Cummings finally found a publisher for what became No Thanks, he revisited a tension between what his poems look like when typed on his typewriter, and what happened to them when “retranslate[d]” into the font and font-size of the publisher’s linotype machine. On March 11, 1935, he wrote a letter to his Aunt Jane venting his frustration. As he vents, he provides yet another glimpse into how crucial the blank spaces are to his makings: “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” (see Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings, edited by F. W. Dupee and George Stade [New York: Harcourt, 1969], 140-41).

The above drafts, proofs, instructions demonstrate how each space matters. The final image of the above gallery provides a juxtaposition of “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” from the Typescript Edition of No Thanks and from The Complete Poems, thereby underscoring what is lost in translation.

For essays that engage the drafts and proofs of “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” see

Huang-Tiller, Gillian. “One Art: Intuition and Typography in E. E. Cummings’ Original Analysis of ‘r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r’ (1935).” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 20 (2013): 110-115.

Kilyovski, Vakrilen. “The Nude, the Grasshopper, and the Poet-Painter: A Reading of E. E. Cummings’ ‘r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r.'” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 20 (2013): 99-109.

Webster, Michael. “Plotting the Evolution of a r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r.” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 20 (2013): 116-143.

Both essays appear in a cluster of essays from the 20th volume of Spring.

For an exploration of “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” Taoism, and ecology, see Etienne Terblanche’s E. E. Cummings: Poetry and Ecology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), 49-54.

For an exploration of “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” and Animal Studies, see Aaron Moe’s Zoopoetics: Animals and the Making of Poetry (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014), 77-82.

For a sampling of older scholarship on the poem, see the entry on the Modern American Poetry site.

Drafts from No Thanks (1935)

mOOn Over tOwns mOOn (Complete Poems 383)

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r (Complete Poems 396)

may i feel said he (Complete Poems 399)

birds( (Complete Poems 448)