For the virtue of the poem is not in its being set down on paper, as a picture’s is in the way it is set down on canvas. Genius in the poet is a sympathy between different parts of his own mind, in the painter between his paint-brush and his canvas. Method in poetry is therefore not anything that can be talked about in terms of physical form. The poem is not the paper, not the type, not the spoken syllables. It is as invisible and as inaudible as thought; and the only method that the real poet is interested in using is one that will present the poem without making it either visible or audible, without turning it into a substitute for a picture or for music. But when conservatism of method, through its abuse by slack-minded poets, has come to mean the supplanting of the poem by an exercise in poet-craft, then there is a reasonable place for innovation, if the new method defeats the old method and brings up the important question: how should poetry be written? Once this question is asked, the new method has accomplished its end. Further than this it should not be allowed to go, for poems cannot be written from a formula. The principal value of a new method is that it can act as a strong deterrent against writing in a worn-out style. It is not suggested here that poets should imitate Cummings, but that poems like Cummings’ and the attention they demand should make it harder for the standardized article to pass itself off as poetry. If we return to the two versions of the sunset piece, it will be seen just how this benefit is conferred. We may not accept the Cummings version, but once we have understood it we cannot return with satisfaction to the standardized one. Turning back for a more direct comparison of these two versions, we perceive how much of the force of the original has been lost in the second. We have used capitals throughout as in formal verse, but have thus eliminated the large final _S_, which was one of the most important properties of the original, and given a look of unnecessary importance to words like _And_, _To_, and _So_. By substituting normal spacing and verse-form we have had to disregard the significance of the double spacing and indentation, and of the variation in the length of the lines. Formal indentation can either be a guide to rhyming pairs or a sign that the first part of a line is missing, but it cannot denote musical rests of varying value as with Cummings. We have also expanded the suggested ideas by grammatic means and supplemented them with the words that seemed to have been omitted. But in so doing we have sacrificed the compactness of the previous poem and introduced a definiteness which is false to its carefully devised dreaminess. So by correcting the poem in those poetic features in which it seemed deficient we have not added anything to it but on the contrary detracted from it.