The surprising similarities between e.e. cummings and Ronald Reagan:
On the surface, Ronald Reagan and e.e.cummings would have very little in common. But cummings was as staunch an anti-communist as Reagan. Early in his life, cummings like many other poets and artists was a committed socialist who believed that Soviet Russia was superior to anything American. But after visiting the Soviet Union in 1931 he was horrified by the gray, the fear and the absence of smiles in this so-called utopia. When he returned to Cambridge, he told his friends of what he saw but they would have none of it. Suddenly, cummings could not get his work published. He would live most of his life in poverty until he experienced a surge of popularity in the late 1950s that would last until his death in 1962 – the year Reagan became a Republican.
Maybe they didn't like his poetry in the 1940s. Or maybe it was the surging popularity of beatniks like Maynard G. Krebs who found insight in his unorthodox orthography. But then how could we explain the massive sales of e.e. during the rise of conservatism in the 80s and 90s?
Posted by: John Foust | 11/27/2007 at 07:32 AM