[Michael Juster]

David Mason has a long and very thoughtful review of the new Cummings' biography in today's Wall Street Journal. David may have been a little too kind to Cummings as a person, but if I am right on that point, we can all safely write it off to David's generosity of spirit.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I'd love to read it, but maybe it will come someday in a book of essays.
I'm a fan. Of both.

[Gail White]

I'd like to find it too. I love essays about poets, and I don't know a thing about the life of Cummings.

[Quincy Lehr]

Cummings? Sporadically decent politics, though less than his reputation makes out. Lots of divorces. That's the short version.

[Ann Drysdale]

Can this be read online?

[Michael Juster]

Ann:

I don't think so. I believe the Journal requires an online subscription. My frugal wife has held onto her discount print subscription since her MIT days.

Mike

PS: As for Cummings himself, I would call him an arrogant, sleazeball pig, except that would be horribly unfair to swine everywhere. That's not a backdoor attack on his innovative work, much of which I admire and enjoy.

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Here's the link--it is a freebie from the Journal --am settling in to read it with my first cup of coffee

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...38622139238750

OR if this doesn't pop up as free without a login type into your google--

wall street journal cummings mason

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thanks, Sharon.

[Ed Shacklee]

Thanks, Mike and Sharon (google worked like a charm). Whatever problems there may be with this particular biography -- and the others, too, it sounds like -- the article made me want to read more about him.

Ed


P.S. Vendler's essay doesn't seem to be available online. Too bad: I wonder what else she had to say and why being "sentimental" is so damning.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Thanks to Michael for pointing out the article, to Sharon for letting me know how to read it online, and to David for writing it in the first place. It looks as if Cheever has perpetrated a sadly minor book about a major poet, and somebody at the WSJ was smart enough to assign the review to a writer with major chops.

(As a human being, Cummings may have been difficult at best, and perhaps a lot worse than that. But as an artist, he was mind-blowingly brilliant. If there is such a thing as "greatest American poet of the 20th century," he is certainly on the short list. Dismissing him as a sentimentalist is no less blinkered and idiotic than dismissing Whitman as a long-winded pornographer or Dickinson as maiden lady who crocheted cute little verbal doilies. Geniuses skate close to the edge and take the occasional spill. They're still geniuses.)