Books: Nobody's Poet

COLLECTED POEMS—E. E. Cummings— Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Among the various plenties that abound in the U. S., the most indigenous and widespread is the plenty of Nothing that almost any U. S. citizen will admit he's got. This inexhaustible national resource is the inspiration of many a popular song (Nobody's Sweetheart; I Got Plenty of Nothin;'), of many a Negro spiritual and folksong. But it has been passed up by most U. S. poets. The first one to crack this national theme wide open, to taste all its implications and to manage to spit...

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