Old Age Sticks (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

“Old age sticks” displays many of the poetic innovations that distinguish cummings’s verse, including the absence of capital letters, abrupt enjambment, and irregular use of punctuation. Since so much of this defies the rules typical of poetry before the twentieth century, critics have searched for some source and meaning for cummings’s inventiveness. The relationship of cummings’s unique visual arrangements of words on the page to his work as a painter has provided scholars with a good deal of useful evidence. In his book e. e. cummings: An Introduction to the Poetry, Rushworth Kidder comments, “poetry and visual art grew, in cummings’ mind, from one root; and while their outermost branches are distinct enough, there are many places closer to the trunk where it is hard to know which impulse accounts for a piece of work.” Playing with spelling, grammar, line-breaks, punctuation, and rhyme allowed cummings many levels of ambiguity, many subtleties of meaning in a seemingly simple verse. Milton Cohen writes of such ambiguities in his article “e. e. cummings’ Sleight of Hand: Perceptual Ambiguity in His Early Poetry, Painting and Career” for University of Hartford Studies in Literature. He suggests that, while these ambiguities are often regarded as “structural,” they are actually essentially “perceptual.” He explains that “they control the speed and manner in which a line is perceived.” Cohen argues further that, “Typically, the reader perceives a thematic motif and expects its progression, only to have an ambiguous swing word lead to quite a different meaning. Momentarily thrown off by the unexpected turn, the reader must accommodate the new idea, either by reconciling it with the original, or by maintaining both in suspension.” According to this critic, then, cummings’s poetry not only ties meaning to form, but the form even compels the reader to perceive more than one potential meaning at once.

Compare & Contrast

• 1958: Moroccan women gain the right to choose their own husbands. The government in the capital, Rabat, restricts polygamy in the country.

  Today: In Egypt, after a long debate between Islamic fundamentalists and human rights activists, a national ban is passed protecting women from female circumcision.

• 1958: The first Grammy Award is given to the Italian song “Volare,” but the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is criticized for favoring older, more conservative, middle-of-the-road artists over youth-oriented performers.

  Today: The 1997 Grammy Award for Best Album goes to Beck Hansen’s Odelay! An eclectic blend of styles from the past and unique lyrics, Beck’s distinctive sound appeals to a young audience.

• 1958: The Earth’s radiation shield of ozone is first tested in an effort to discover what effects have been caused by nuclear weapons testing and high-altitude military and commercial flights. Ozone is an unstable form of oxygen that blocks the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, the cause of human skin cancer. By the 1970s, the ozone layer begins to shrink as a million tons of freon are released into the atmosphere, mostly from aerosol cans.

  Today: Environmentalists suggest that the ozone layer is being depleted. Medical experts suggest that fair-skinned people wear sun-block protectants whenever they are outdoors.

• 1958: Fidel Castro, 32, rides the wake of dictator Fulgencio Bastista’s abdication of Cuba’s leadership. Castro and his Marxist forces overtake the capital Havana on January 3 of the following year, beginning their regime, which he insists is not “communist.”

  1997: Castro’s “humanistic revolution” is considered a failure. Freedom of religion is returned to the country that receives a visit from Pope John Paul II.