Sensitive types can, of course, have a dark side of self-indulgence and evasion of responsibility — and if you doubt that, try reading a biography of E.E. Cummings. On the other hand, his Romanticism saved him from several of the intellectual mistakes of the age. Just as his generation was falling for the Soviet Union, Cummings visited the place and saw straight through it. And the only thing he loathed more than Communism was the belief-now known as scientism-that the supreme kind of knowledge comes from scientific measurement. It was for others to show why this is bad science and worse philosophy. Cummings just launched himself against it, armed with love, gratitude and sheer contempt. As far as he was concerned, a flower in springtime, a kiss, a newborn child are each intrinsically more valuable and interesting than every scientific investigation put together. He overstated his case magnificently:

 what time is it?it is by every star

a different time,and each most falsely true;

or so subhuman superminds declare

— nor all their times encompass me and you: 

The scientific obsessives, "subhuman superminds", are welcome to their theories about the paradoxes of astronomical time, but "me and you" are beyond such idle talk. The poem, a sonnet, goes on:

when are we never,but forever now

(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)

believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do

without confusing timelessness and time. 

Cummings has squeezed into that parenthesis one of the great questions: are we "hosts of eternity", that is, the place where immortal forces meet, and where we make decisions which resonate forever? Or are we "guests", here today and gone tomorrow in a universe which only "seems" to have any meaning? And he gives his answer while keeping up the tone ("believe me,dear...") of a kitchen-table natter.

It has sometimes been alleged that Cummings's poetry failed to develop. Certainly, he carried on until the end writing about love, sex, God, beauty and eternity: for some bizarre reason, he never discovered any more interesting subjects. But this new expanded edition of the Complete Poems demonstrates that he was always moving forward, often taking long detours in experimentation, but finding his way to a profound simplicity. Moreover, it is beautifully printed, and large enough to be used as a murder weapon on any "subhuman superminds" you happen to run into.