a (m)uch-nEEded/praise:of e[e] cummings

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Slate has a well-deserved critical examination of poet e.e. cummings up this week, a writer I believe more relevant right now than ever before, given the experimental, online days in which we live. Poor e.e. cummings - once revered as a Modernist giant, his reputation recently has become one of "that dude high-school students like because his lines look all funny and shit." There's a lot, lot more to cummings' work than simply funny-looking lines, and I especially encourage bloggers, hyperfiction authors and other online writers to check out the ways the man manipulated language for the benefit of his readers, and blurred the lines between the artistic and the scientific that in some ways are still ahead of their time.