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Two Kinds of Against

No thanks by e. e. cummings. The Golden Eagle Press

Poems by Kenneth Fearing. Introduction by Edward Dahlberg. Dynamo

The New Republic, June 1935, 198–199

Despite superficial differences, e. e. cummings’ No thanks and Kenneth Fearing’s Poems have important ingredients in common. Both poets have an exceptional gift for the satirically picturesque. Both specialize in rhetorical devices that keep their pages vivacious almost to the extent of the feverish. Both are practiced at suggesting the subjective through the objective. And both seem driven by attitudes for which there is no completely adequate remedy in the realm of the practical (with Cummings, a sense of isolation—with Fearing, an obsession with death).

Cummings has more range, which is not always a virtue in his case, as much of his wider scope is devoted to cryptic naughtiness of an immature sort, a somewhat infantile delight in the sexual parts, alembicated confessions that seem unnecessarily shy and coy (material which, I suspect, Cummings would have abandoned long before now, had he not discovered a few processes of stylistic chemistry for extracting the last bit of ore). And like the chronic invalid who comes to identify his doctor with his disease, hating them interchangeably, he is dissatisfied not only with the current political and economic texture, but also with the “famous fatheads” and “folks with missians” (vindictively misspelled) who would attempt its radical cure. Fearing can be buoyed up with the thought of a situation wherein “millions of voices become one voice” and “millions of hands . . . move as one.” But Cummings sees the process from the other side, as he strikes at those “worshipping Same,” says they “got athlete’s mouth jumping on & off bandwagons,” and in not very loving verse lambastes the “kumrads” for being deficient in love.

But even a lone wolf cannot feel wholly content without allies. Hence, as with belligerent capitalist states, his occasional nondescript alliance with anyone who will serve (witness his scattering of somewhat shamefacedly anti-Semitic aphorisms, usually consigned to cryptogram, but still “nonsufficiently inunderstood”). As we read No thanks carefully, the following picture emerges: For delights, there is sexual dalliance, into which the poet sometimes reads cosmic implications (though a communicative emphasis is lacking). For politics, an abrupt willingness to let the whole thing go smash. For character building, the rigors of the proud and lonely, eventually crystallizing in rapt adulation of the single star, which is big, bright, deep, near, soft, calm, alone and holy—“Who (holy alone) holy (alone holy) alone.”

Cummings’ resistance to man-made institutions of any kind serves to stimulate a romantic sense of communion with nature (even the mercurial must have some locus of constancy); and the best work in the volume is unquestionably his natural description: the hush of snow falling or fallen; the solemn times when “emptied. Hills. Listen.”; a bird in flight; the “mOOn Over tOwns mOOn”; rain that can “move deeply,” with life and sex burgeoning in response; the bursting forth of a “white with madness wind” that tears “mountains from their sockets” and makes “writhing alive skies”; Poe’s version of the jangling and tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells, brought up to date; the spread of “twilight’s vastness”; and an elegiac piece, an account of the poet ascending a hill by the sea

at dusk

just when

the Light is filled with birds—

a poem so intense, and so well sustained, that we greatly resent the few spots where his mannerisms threaten to undo the mood.

We might say that Cummings’ biology is good, but his history is too bad. As historian, at the best he must niggle:

little

mr Big

notbusy

Busi

ness notman.

And at the worst, he must attack in the lump:

news alimony blackmail whathavewe

and propaganda

—an attitude too non-negotiable for a society to run a growing concern on.

Fearing’s clearly formed philosophy of history gives his work much better coordination and direction as satire. Cummings the antinomian symbolizes refusal as the little boy that won’t play. Fearing, the poet as politician, can offer a take-it-or-leave-it basis of collaboration, a platform, a communist set of values that makes for an unambiguous alignment of forces and a definite indication of purpose. He has a frame of reference by which to locate his satire. Whereas Cummings as satirist is driven by his historical amorphousness into personal moods as the last court of appeal, Fearing can attack with the big guns of a social framework. He can pronounce moral judgments; and remembering Juvenal or Swift we realize what an advantage this is, for any invective, implicit or explicit, is strongest when the inveigher is appealing to a rigorous code of likes and dislikes. Whereas both poets are alive to the discordant clutter about us, Cummings tends to be jumpy, shifty, look-for-me-here-and-you’ll-find-me-there. (After reading him for an hour or so, I show the tetanic symptoms of a cocaine addict.) Fearing is better able to take on something of the heavy oratorical swell, which he manages by an exceptional fusion of ecclesiastic intonations (the lamentation) and contemporary cant (slang, business English, the imagery of pulp fiction, syndicated editorials and advertising).

An inverted Whitman, Fearing scans the country with a statistical eye; but where Whitman sought to pile up a dithyrambic catalogue of glories, Fearing gives us a satirically seasoned catalogue of burdens. Whitman, the humanitarian, could look upon a national real-estate boom and see there a mystical reaching out of hands. Fearing conversely would remark upon the “profitable smile,” the “purpose that lay beneath the merchant’s warmth.” This method leads at times to the mechanical device of indictments held together by a slightly varied refrain, but for the most part the poet is as ingenious as he is sincere. I know of no better patent, for instance, than this way of saying (in “1933”) that the official pronouncements are crooked and that the organization to reinforce the crookedness is terrifyingly efficient:

You heard the gentleman, with automatic precision,

speak the truth.

Cheers. Triumph.

And then mechanically it followed the gentleman lied.

Deafening applause. Flashlights, cameras, microphones.

Floral tribute. Cheers.

His “Dirge” to the average man winds up superbly by the use of slang interjections:

And wow he died as wow he lived,

going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and

biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired,

zowie did he live and zowie did he die . . .

It is harder in limited space to illustrate Fearing than cummings, as Fearing does not get his effects so succinctly. But I might give one more instance of his skill. Readers will recall the often cited remark of Eliot’s wherein he characterizes his “general point of view” as “classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion.” One may greatly respect Eliot for his important attainments, and still enjoy the deftness of Fearing’s reference to

That genius, that litterateur, Theodore True,

St. Louis boy who made good as an Englishman in

theory, a deacon in vaudeville, a cipher in politics,

undesirable in large numbers in any community.

Through the volume, Fearing’s discerning hatred of all that the “fetishism of commodities” has done for us, as regards the somewhat prospering as well as the destitute, is brilliantly conveyed, along with a quality of reverie, of fears and yearnings that delve far deeper than the contemporary.