Dear Editor,
At his best Cummings is often a satirist, and evidently his satires are still too hot to handle for the likes of Jason Guriel [“Sub-Seuss,” January 2013]. Instead of his flaccid selections, try “Poem, Or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal,” “i sing of Olaf glad and big,” “flotsam and jetsam,” “the Noster was a ship of swank,” “as freedom is a breakfast food,” “my father moved through dooms of love,” “plato told,” “pity this busy monster manunkind,” and numerous others.
Poet and translator Jim Powell lives in the Bay Area of California. He is a fourth-generation Californian, and his work investigates politics, history, and material culture, often drawing on years of research. Of his second book, Substrate (2009), which includes sections on California history as well as evocations of the natural world and piercing satire, Powell noted, “I was interested in using the...