Boxers, Cue Balls, and Comedians: E. E. Cummings’ Polytexts

Abstract

Poetry and painting were the “the twin obsessions” of the American modernist E. E. Cummings. His engagement with more than one artistic practice makes his work suitable for a case study of polytextuality, which is the purpose of the present article. First, a brief theoretical introduction to polytextuality is offered. Then, four of Cummings’ poems are read against the background of their visual counterparts. Since the poem-picture pairs are treated as polytexts, the discussion focuses on the “intersemiotic transposition” involved in the process of transferring thematic and material data from one sign system to another.