Code Poetry in Motion: E. E. Cummings and his Digital Grasshopper

This essay argues E. E. Cummings's "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r" (1935) anticipates the contemporary practice of experimental writing known as codework. Encoding through typographical means the action sequence of the grasshopper's leap, Cummings transformed his mechanical typewriter into the equivalent of a hardware device supplied with the necessary software for running the poem as a program. The three permutations of "grasshopper"—"r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r," "PPEGORHRASS," and "gRrEaPsPhOs"—reflect a block cipher method of encryption, each one comprising a subkey governing the operations of its surrounding textual arrangement. Like the punch cards driving Jacquard's loom and Babbage's Analytical Engine, these subkeys weave for us a digital grasshopper.