CURRENT POSITION:
Professor of English, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.EDUCATION:
Ph.D. Comparative Literature. August 1987, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Major: Comparative Literature (20th century)
Minors: Art History and ItalianM.A. Comparative Literature. May 1984, Indiana University. Thesis Topic: "The Influence of Stéphane Mallarmé on James Joyce: A Reassessment."
M.A. English. May 1977, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.
B.A. English and French. June 1975, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.
"The 'small eye poet' from Imagism to 'not numerable whom'." Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 21-22 (2014-2015): 106-118.FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS:
"Cummings Rewrites Eliot." T. S. Eliot, France, and the Mind of Europe. Ed. Jayme Stayer. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 75-91.
"Plotting the Evolution of a r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r." Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 20 (2013): 116-143.
Review of Etienne Terblanche, E. E. Cummings: Poetry and Ecology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012). Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 20 (2013): 167-171.
"E. E. Cummings." A Companion to Modernist Poetry. Ed. David Chinitz and Gail McDonald. Chichester, U.K. / Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 494-504.
"Lugete: The Divine Lost and Found Child in Cummings." Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 19 (2012): 37-49. Print and Web.
"Three Memorials: Rushworth M. Kidder, John Edwin Cowen, and Robert Wegner," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 19 (2012): 8-16.
“Pound Teaching Cummings, Cummings Teaching Pound.” Ezra Pound and Education. Eds. Steven Yao and Michael Coyle. Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 2012. 47-66.
“ ‘almost all I don’t know about art’: E .E. Cummings Explicates His Dust Jacket Blurb for Him,” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 17 (2010): 44-57.
“Notes for Cummings: A Resource for Students and Teachers,” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 17 (2010): 96-105.
“Cummings’s Silent Numerical Iconic Prosody,” Media inter Media: Essays in Honor of Claus Clüver. Ed. Stephanie Glaser. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 423-438.
Review of Isabelle Alfandary's E. E. Cummings, ou la minuscule lyrique in Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 16 (2007): 176-181.
"Postfazione." E. E. Cummings: Poesie D'Amore. Trans. Salvatore Di Giacomo. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2009. 127-133.
"The Enormous Room: A Dada of One’s Own," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 14-15 (2005-2006): 127-140.
"A Memorial: Nancy T. Andrews, Daughter of E. E. Cummings," Spring 14-15 (2005-2006): 260-268.
[Co-authored with Etienne Terblanche] "Eco-Iconicity in the Poetry and Poem-groups of E. E. Cummings." Insistent Images: Iconicity in Language and Literature 5. Eds. Elzbieta Tabakowska, Christina Ljungberg, and Olga Fischer. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2007. 155-172.
"Three Memorials" [George James Firmage, Philip L. Gerber, and John M. (Jack) Gill] Spring 13 (2004): 8-13.
"Cummings' Sinister Dexterity: Exercises in Meaning and Unmeaning," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 13 (2004): 90-103.
Review of Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno's E. E. Cummings: A Biography in Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 13 (2004): 147-153.
" 'floating particles of paper': E. E. Cummings' Collage Poems," Cahiers Charles V 34 (September 2003): 51-73. [Collage / Montage / Assemblage: Poésie Anglaise et Américaine. Ed. Paul Volsik]
"Poemgroups in No Thanks," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 11 (2002): 10-40.
"'le chant est le silence': Être et Néant dans la Poésie Visuelle de E. E. Cummings." Trans. Thierry Gillyboeuf. Plein Chant 74-75 (Winter-Spring 2002): 151-167. [Translation of "singing is silence"]"Magic Iconism: Defamiliarization, Sympathetic Magic, and Visual Poetry (Apollinaire and Cummings)." European Journal of English Studies 5.1 (2001): 97-113.
"E. E. Cummings: The New Nature Poetry and the Old," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 9 (2000): 109-124.
Review of Martin Heusser's I Am My Writing and Norman Friedman's (Re) Valuing Cummings in Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 8 (1999): 171-78.
"'singing is silence': Being and Nothing in the Visual Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature. Ed. Olga Fischer and Max Nänny. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 1999. 199-214.
"'hatred bounces': Satire and Prejudice in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 7 (1998): 23-38.
"E. E. Cummings and the Reader: Technique as Critique," Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. 223-232.
Reading Visual Poetry after Futurism: Marinetti, Apollinaire, Schwitters, Cummings. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
"Cummings, Kennedy, and the Major/Minor Issue," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 4 (1995): 76-82.
"Searching for Browning's Traces in 'The Dead,'" James Joyce Quarterly 31.4 (1994): 552-557.
"A Note on the Two Comps," Grand Valley Review 5.2 (1990): 17-20.
"What Was Comp. Lit. and Where Did It Go?" Grand Valley Review 5.1 (1989): 27-6.
"Words-in-Freedom and the Oral Tradition," Visible Language 23 (1989): 65-87.
“Proto-Concrete Ventures in the Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Gardes.” Concrete Poetry: An International Perspective. Ed. Claus Clüver. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2017.NOTABLE BLOG POSTS:
"Silver Lake Revisited." EEC Society Blog (24 Aug. 2016). Web.
"Cummings Centennials (1914-1915)." EEC Society Blog (23 March 2016). Web.
"Audio Cummings." EEC Society Blog (21 Aug. 2015). Web.
"Estlin Cummings, 'Animal Emperor' and Wild West Impresario." EEC Society Blog (4 Aug. 2015). Web.
"An Old Door, Cummings' Personal Printer, and W [ViVa]." EEC Society Blog (29 June 2015). Web.
"Cummings Centennials (1913)." EEC Society Blog (17 Dec. 2014). Web.
"Wholly How: Revisiting 'anyone lived in a pretty how town'," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Boston, MA, May 24-27, 2018.PRESENTATIONS TO FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND COMMUNITY:
" 'allusiveness, extremely elliptical': Modernist Allusion in E. E. Cummings' Poems," Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville February 22-24, 2018.
"Apocalypse Now: E. E. Cummings' Atom Bomb Poems," 12th Biennial ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, June 20-24, 2017.
"Learning to Be Modernist: E. E. Cummings' Poetic Experiments, 1916-1917," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Boston, MA, May 25-28, 2017.
"E. E. Cummings' Play Him (1927) and the Fourth Dimension," Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, Feb. 23-25, 2017.
" 'toujours et tous les jours la peur': Fear and Joy in Cummings' Poems," American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 26-29, 2016.
" 'Buffalo Bill ’s [not entirely] defunct': Posters, Performance, and Poetry," Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, February 18-20, 2016.
"A Flight--Out of Flatness: Cummings and Dos Passos Travel to the Soviet Union," American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, May 21-24, 2015.
"Archetypal Individuals in Cummings' Enormous Room," Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, February 26-28, 2015.
"E. E. Cummings' Self-Portraits in Poetry and Painting." American Literature Association Conference, Washington, DC, May 22-25, 2014.
" 'The Beating of a Drum': The Popular and the Primitive in T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes and E. E. Cummings Him.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, February 20-22, 2014.
"The Evolution of a Grasshopper: 'r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r' in All its States," American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, May 23-25, 2013.
"The 'small eye poet' from Imagism to 'not numerable whom'," Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, February 21-23, 2013.
"How to Plot a Grasshopper: Reading E. E. Cummings' 'r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r'," American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 24-27, 2012.
"Cummings Rewrites Eliot," T. S. Eliot Society Annual Meeting, Institut du Monde Anglophone, Université de Paris III Sorbonne nouvelle, Paris, France, July 18–22, 2011.
“Lugete: The Divine Lost and Found Child in Cummings,” American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, May 26-29, 2011.
"Learning to Be Modernist: Some Cummings Letters to Scofield Thayer," Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, February 24-26, 2011.
" 'A world of made / is not a world of born': E. E. Cummings and 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'," American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 27-30, 2010.
"(Re)Defining Sincerity," paper discussed during "Modernist Sincerity" seminar at the Modernist Studies Association's 11th annual conference, Montréal, Québec, Canada, November 5-8, 2009.
"The Drafts of E. E. Cummings' 'Lost' Essay on Ulysses," North American James Joyce Conference, Buffalo, NY, June 13-17, 2009.
"E. E. Cummings, Theorist of Modernism," American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, May 21-24, 2009.
" 'almost all I don’t know about art': E .E. Cummings Explicates His Dust Jacket Blurb for Him." The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Louisville, KY, February 19-21, 2009.
"Photography as the Grave of the Self in E. E. Cummings' EIMI," American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 22-25, 2008.
"Suicide and Rebirth in E. E. Cummings' EIMI," The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, February 21-23, 2008.
"The Early Late Modernism of E. E. Cummings' EIMI," seminar paper discussed at the Modernist Studies Association's 9th Annual Conference, Long Beach, California, November 1-4, 2007.
"E. E. Cummings, 'a closet intellectual'," American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 24-27, 2007.
"Cummings and Jung: Being as Resistance," The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, February 22-24, 2007.
" 'The Beating of a Drum': The Popular and the Primitive in T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes and E. E. Cummings' Him," seminar paper discussed at the T. S. Eliot Society's 27th Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MO, September 22-24, 2006.
"Idle Tears and Doubtless Thomas: Cummings' Views of T. S. Eliot," American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 25-28, 2006.
" 'Goodbye Cambridge’: Eliot & Cummings Go Slumming," The Twentieth Century Literature & Culture Conference, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, February 23-25, 2006.
"E. E. Cummings and the Modernist Self," seminar paper discussed at the Modernist Studies Association's 7th Annual Conference, Chicago IL, November 3-6, 2005
"Cummings' Silent Numerical Prosody," American Literature Association conference on Poetic Form, San Diego, CA, September 29-October 1, 2005.
"Pound Teaching Cummings, Cummings Teaching Pound," Ezra Pound and Education Conference, Hamilton College and Colgate University, April 28-May 1, 2005.
[With Etienne Terblanche] "Eco-Iconicity in the Poetry and Poem-groups of E. E. Cummings: A Dialogue," presented at the Fifth Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature, Unesco Chair For Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication, The Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, March 17-20, 2005
"Meaning into Being: Cummings' Transformational Language Games," Seminar paper discussed and presented at the Modernist Studies Association’s 6th Annual Conference, Vancouver BC, October 21-24, 2004.
"The Enormous Room: A Dada of One's Own." American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 27-30, 2004.
"Cummings' Sinister Dexterity: Exercises in Meaning and Unmeaning," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, May 22-25, 2003.
"'floating particles of paper': E. E. Cummings' Collage Poems," presented at the conference "Collage, Montage, and Assemblage in English Language Poetry," Université de Paris VII—Denis Diderot and the the Insitut d'Anglais Charles V, Paris, France, June 13-15, 2002."Poemgroups in No Thanks," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, May 24-27, 2001.
"Sentimental Avant-Gardism? The Case of Kurt Schwitters," Rethinking the Avant-Garde: Between Politics and Aesthetics, University of Notre Dame, April 14-15, 2000.
"The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Popular Culture in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Seminar paper presented at the inaugural conference of the Modernist Studies Association, Penn State University, State College, PA, October 7-10, 1999.
"E. E. Cummings: The New Nature Poetry and the Old," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 27-30, 1999.
"Magic Iconism: Defamiliarization, Sympathetic Magic, and Visual Poetry (Apollinaire and Cummings)," Second Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature, University of Amsterdam, March 25-27, 1999.
"'hatred bounces': Satire and Prejudice in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 22-25, 1997.
"'singing is silence': Being and Nothing in the Visual Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Symposium: Iconicity in Language and Literature, University of Zürich, March 20-22, 1997.
"E. E. Cummings: Science as Threat and Authority," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 26-28, 1995.
"E. E. Cummings and the Reader: Technique as Critique," Interart Studies: New Perspectives, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, May 15-19, 1995.
"Cummings, Kennedy, and the Major/Minor Issue," American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, June 2-5, 1994.
"Kurt Schwitters Assembles Abstract Poetry," International Association for Word and Image Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, August 15-21, 1993.
"Six Troublesome Terms in Avant-Garde Poetics," American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Bloomington, IN, March 25-28, 1993.
"Apollinaire and the Emblematic Tradition," American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Columbia University, April 3-5, 1992.
"Passion, Play, and Performance in Pirandello's 'Questa sera si recita a soggetto,'" Midwest MLA, St. Louis, November 1985.
"Apocalypse Now and Here: E. E. Cummings' Atom Bomb Poems," CLAS Faculty Research Colloquium, GVSU, February 15, 2018.
"E. E. Cummings at Silver Lake and Joy Farm," Carpe Librum Book Group, Ada, MI, December 14, 2016.
"E. E. Cummings' Play Him and the Fourth Dimension," CLAS Faculty Research Colloquium, GVSU, September 16, 2016.
"How to Plot a Grasshopper: Reading E. E. Cummings' 'r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r'," English Department Colloquia Series, GVSU, March 26, 2012.
"E. E. Cummings, Theorist of Modernism," English Department Colloquia Series, GVSU, November 2, 2009.
"Suicide and Rebirth in E. E. Cummings' EIMI," Department of English Scholars Colloquia Series, Grand Valley State University, November 12, 2007.
"Iconicity in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Department of English Scholars Colloquia Series, Lake Huron Hall 161, Grand Valley State University, April 11, 2005.
"How to Read a Cummings Poem," English Department Colloquium, Grand Valley State University, March 17, 2003."What Is Visual Poetry?" Arts & Humanities Word & Image Conference, Grand Valley State University, September 14, 1999.
"Hesiod’s Theogony Viewed on a Male / Female Axis" for the Grand Valley Classical Forum, September 21, 1997.
"Word Emblems: Apollinaire’s Calligrams and Western Visual Poetry," Grand Valley State Faculty Colloquium, March 27, 1992.
"What Was Comparative Literature and Where Did It Go?," Grand Valley State Faculty Colloquium, November 1988.
Referee for the manuscript, “T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, and the Poetic Career: An Essay for Eros” for the journal Literator (3-27-2015)
Publisher’s Reader for a book proposal for a volume of essays titled The Edinburgh Companion to T. S. Eliot and the Arts, edited by Frances Dickey and John Morgenstern (University of Edinburgh Press) (7-14-2014)
Publisher’s Reader for book proposal by J. Alison Rosenblitt, Each Imperishable Stanza: E.E. Cummings and the Classics (University of Pennsylvania Press) (6-3-2014)
Referee for the manuscript, “Thirteen Ways of Reading EEC’s R-O-U-N-D MoOn: And the Making of a Poem” for Resources in American Literary Study (6-7-2014)
Publisher’s Reader for book manuscript by James Dempsey, Tortured Excellence: The Life of Scofield Thayer (University Press of Florida) (8-10-2012)
Referee for the manuscript “ ‘The plum survives its poems:’ Meditative Space in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings and Wallace Stevens” for the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (5-6-2011)
Editor: Cummings, E. E. “Explication of ‘An Imaginary Dialogue,’ the Dust Jacket Blurb for Him.” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 17 (2010): 41-43.
Referee for the manuscript “Cummings’ Urban Ecology: An Exploration of Eimi, No Thanks, & the Cultivation of the Ecological Self” for the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (10-25-2009 and 6-23-2010)
Publisher’s Reader for book proposal by Laura K. Noell for In Quest of Myth (Broadview Press)
Proofreader for the new edition of E. E. Cummings’ EIMI (W.W. Norton / Liveright, 2007).
Editor: Cummings. E. E. “Letter to Norman Friedman, June 25, 1955.” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 14-15 (2006): 147-155.
Web master for Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society.Editor of the print version of Spring, 2003-
Production editor for the print version of Spring, 1999-
Publisher’s reader for Eva M. Thury and Margaret K. Devinney. Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths (New York and London: Oxford UP, 2004).
Editor for Encompass, alumni newsletter of the Comparative Literature Program at Indiana University, 1987-88.
Visual Poetry
Interarts comparison
Understanding resistance to the cultural and aesthetic "other"
The artist's role in society
Modern English, French, Italian, and German poetry
Mythology and oral narrative
Translating and translation theory
At Grand Valley State University, August 1988 - April 2009:
Literary Study: GenreCourses taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, August 1981 - May 1986:
Literatures in English: Introduction to Literature
Graduate Period Seminar: American Renaissance
Graduate Period Seminar: Modernist Poetry
Nineteenth-Century American Literature
American Literature II
World Mythology
World Literature
Nature Writing
American Civilization
European Civilization
Nature Writing
Literary Modernism
Studies in Poetry: Modern Poems
Studies in World Literature: African and Arabic Literature
The Moderns
Studies in Fiction: Encountering the Other
Topics in Literature: The Artist and Society
Introduction to Liberal Studies
Classical Literature
The Classical World
Modern World Masterpieces
British Writers II
American Writers II
Business and Preprofessional Writing
English Composition: From Narration to Exposition
English Composition: Exposition and Argument
Modern Literature and the Other Arts:
(Introduction to literature, painting, and music and interarts comparison.)
Major Themes in World Literature
Professional Writing Skills
Elementary Composition
Introduction to Writing and the Study of Literature
Claus Clüver, Director. "The Semiotics of Aurally and Visually Elastic Poetries: 1910-1940."
Modernist poets stretched the boundaries of poetry by creating sound poems, calligrams, and typographic and typewritten visual forms. New semiotic relations created by this widening of genre are studied in the texts of five poets: F. T. Marinetti, Guillaume Apollinaire, Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, and E. E. Cummings. Differences and similarities among these texts are then compared with the Concrete Poetry of the 1950's. All these experiments are seen as a reaction to aestheticism, as attempts to bring art closer to the praxis of life. Peter Bürger's theory of the avant-garde provides a tool for comparing the context, effectiveness, and degree of those attempts.LANGUAGES:
French and Italian
German (Reading Knowledge)
Americanist Search Committee, 2011-2012PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:
Mark A. & Elizabeth C. Murray Study Abroad Scholarship Committee, 2012
English Department Curriculum Committee, 2010-
English Department Personnel Committee, 1999-2004
Chair, English Department Personnel Committee, 1999-2001
English Department Personnel Committee, 1990-1991
English Department M. A. Committee, 2003-2010
English Department Student Activities Committee, 2002-2010
Chair pro-tem, Arts and Humanities Curriculum Committee, 1997-1998.
Member of English Department Task Force to consider options for departmental reorganization, summer 1998. (Wrote "Umbrella Model" proposal.)
English Department Faculty Review Committee, 1996-1997.
English Department Curriculum Committee, 1993-1996.
University Academic Senate, 1991-1992.
English Department Composition Committee, 1991-1992.
Art Editor, Amaranthus, student literary magazine, GVSU, 1991-1995.
English Department Media and Video Librarian, 1991-2003.
Oldenburg Writing Contest, 1991-1994, 2004-
Translators' Group, GVSU, 1992.
Recycling Committee, 1989-1990.
American Comparative Literature AssociationBack to:
International Association of Word and Image Studies
E. E. Cummings Society
Modernist Studies Association
Iconicity in Language and Literature
Mike Webster's home page
Recent Publications