Then, “--how can my dreams forget--”, to account grammatically for the vivid present tense in which the whole poem is written, and to put _dream_ in its more logical position, since in the original poem it is doing double duty for a specific image (_fishing-net_, following from _dragging_) and the vagueness with which the image is felt. The conclusion to be drawn from this exercise might be that poems must in the future be written in the Cummings way if poetry is not to fall to pieces altogether. But the poetry of E. E. Cummings is clearly more important as a sign of local irritation in the poetic body than as the model for a new tradition. The important thing to recognize, in a time of popular though superficial education, is the necessity of emphasizing to the reading public the differences between good and bad poems, just such differences as we have been pointing out here. Poems in such a time, indeed, may forget that they have any function other than to teach the proper approach to poetry: there is an exaggerated though excusable tendency to suspend the writing of all poetry not intentionally critical. (There are, of course, always exceptions: poets whose writing is so self-contained that it is not affected by stalenesses in traditional poetry or obliged to attack them or escape from them.) Cummings in this poem was really rewriting the other poem which we gave into a good poem. But for the rarer poet there is no ‘other poem’; there is only the poem which he writes. Cummings’ technique, indeed, if further and more systematically developed, would become so complicated that poetry would be no more than mechanical craftsmanship, the verse patterns growing so elaborate that the principal interest in them would be mathematical. In their present experimental stage, and only in their experimental stage, these patterns are undoubtedly suggestive. Poets, however, do not pursue innovations for their own sake. They are on the whole conservative in their methods so long as these ensure the proper security and delivery of the poem.