Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 08:23:55 -0700 From: dwalter-AT-ucla.edu (don walter) Subject: cummings again Laurel Ann Taylor wrote, asking (as did someone else) about dwam & dwem, and about cummings and prostitutes. I didn't mean to be cryptic, but didn't realize that those words were not widely known: the original was Dead White European Males (a reference to what writings were and were not considered part of the canon of English courses), extended by me to D W American Ms, to cover cummings. In the 1920's (30's??) he wrote several poems celebrating three or four prostitutes, as glorious bodies/persons (it seemed to me), which are collected in most of his Collected Poems books, I think (I have them here at home, if they weren't included in later (canonical?) collections). I found those poems not offensive, but rather, joyous, as he most often was-- but I wondered (and wonder) whether there is a P.C. attitude toward 20's/30's men writing joyously about prostitutes (sorry: P.C. means politically correct, in the narrow, 90's version of that phrase). cummings changed and grew a lot over the years, as one would hope from sampling most of his more popular poems; he also had a very happy marriage (his fourth? I think) toward the end of his life. Don
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