File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-07-07.000, message 40


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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