A Deconstructive Perspective Of E.E. Cummings's Poems

The paper is carried on with its introduction to E. E. Cummings, who nowadays ranks as one of the giants in American modern poetry and has been known as an innovator and experimentalist because of his unique poems and fresh techniques. E. E. Cummings is on the other hand criticized by some scholars because he makes his style eccentric and playful. In China, Cummings is holding more and more scholars' interest too; he seems unusual as well as controversial by referring to his odd typography, peculiar spellings, and witting grammatical tricks. The paper takes a deconstructive perspective of E. E. Cummings's poems, considering that his original, anti-traditional and philosophical aspects are the typical characteristics reflected in his language. And Cummings's conception of himself in nature and world or the tension between his poetry and so-called civilization are major themes of his poetry. E. E. Cummings-style is obviously seen between the lines. In the "theory of poetry", the concepts of"differance", "dissemination", "supplement" and "trace" that deconstruction concerns will be employed to deal with Cummings's individuality, inventiveness and thoughtfulness that highlight Cummings in many aspects. Fundamentally, Cummings is original because he believes the value of man--being original and unique in a world of difference; Cummings is anti-traditional because he exercises the enlightenment of Cubism, Dadaism, etc. and makes full use of decapitalization, word choice, word coinage, unique typography, word spacing, idiosyncratic punctuation marks and syntactic deviation in his works; Cummings is thoughtful and philosophical because he involves himself in the particular speculation about the essence of man, nature, world, love, death, etc.In distinction from traditional poetry, Cummings's poems intentionally relate to the techniques of poetical composition, exactly speaking, his experimental poems are much concemed with the visual revolution of arts and Cubism and Dadaism. However, all these do not make him a great poet like Eliot or Pound of his time, but a major minor poet in America. Of course, Derrida's deconstruction is a new perspective to understand Cummings's unique poems. It is no doubt that Cummings's many thoughts, similar to Derrida's deconstruction theory, are shining in many ways, but a bit extreme and ideal too. Hence, we should take more dedication and consideration to read Cummings critically just as the way we read Derrida.