How did Ezra Pound influence E. E. Cummings writings?

Answer 1

Ezra Pound and E E Cummings carried on an extensive correspondence from the 1920s onward. Pound often remarked upon Cummings' poetry and prose, and the two also discussed the works of mutual friends such as T. S. Elliot. The pair often exchange drafts of their work. The following is an excerpt from a biography on E E Cummings: "At Harvard's graduate school, Cummings spent a great deal of time with the Harvard Poetry Society, where he heard Amy Lowell and Robert Frost. At that time, the Imagist poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) were championing concise images and free verse and claiming that meter and rhyme were outdated. Members of this group found resonance with such modern artists as Picasso, Gris, and Duchamp. Cummings said that he was particularly affected by Pound's poem, The Return, which lacked meter and took liberties with word spacing. This encouraged him to experiment with spacing and typography, something which was facilitated by a typewriter. An avoidance of capital letters and creative placement of punctuation soon became his trademarks. His experimental poetry took many forms, some amusing, some satirical, some beautiful, some profound, and some which did not make much sense. Even his supportive friend, Williams Carlos Williams, thought this one about a cat almost unintelligible: (im)c-a-t(mo) b,i;l;e FallleA ps!fl …"