The poetry lover cannot delve into a pointed exploration of punctative potential without first immersing herself in the plethora of the .punctuated. g!oo!dness that is e.e. Cummings’ canon. It is in Cummings’ typographical imagery that one encounters a valid counterpart to Eliot and Pound’s experiments in content obscurity. Rather than employ form as that which informs the contents of diction, Cummings forces the reader to regard form the main event. His reversal is truly avant-garde in that it redefines the lyric experience. The profound simplicity of his content is infused with electricity generated through the brilliance of creative punctuation:
Despite the space’s status as the most slighted of our weeping punctles, here (or rather, above) she is the main event: no longer merely skulking unseen through pompous diction, she is given room to be. The grasshopper, becoming as he leaps through space, is the space as she dashes unfettered and finally free from punctual decree. And is she not really the most punctual of our beloved punctles—always on time, coming to be only briefly despite her geometric potential? Truly, the space is the saddest of the bunch: exhausted from use; veiled in an invisibility cloak (why?); and truly oppressed, living in the shadow of (un)sightly words.
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