Him

This is a giant Absurdist joke with some philosophical mutterings about identity and reality that reminded me of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. It's basically impossible to stage as written, requiring heaps of scene changes and more heaps of actors and for me it was just too long. Funny scenes were interspersed with dull ones and by the final third the whole thing had been wrung dry of any worth it ever had. It's not what I would have expected from reading his poetry, except for his contempt for poorly educated bigots. (Weird biographical note: he tried to defend the well-educated anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, racist Ezra Pound, as did Hemmingway. It's tough when friends and people you admire turn out to have reprehensible values, contradictory to your own. He appears to have been conflicted.)

Anthropos or the Future of Art

Mercifully short! This is another joke but lasting only one scene. If converted to prose and with one bizarre incident removed, it could easily feel at home in the pages of an SF magazine. Indeed I've read a story in a similar vein (can't remember who by!) though the details are entirely different.

Santa Claus

In which Science takes a hammering for stopping people believing in Santa. Except what is labelled "Science" seems just to be marketing and lies that abuse the idea of science. I think Cummings was aware of this...

Tom

Since I know nothing about ballet and haven't read Uncle Tom's Cabin, either, I find this difficult to assess...just reading the text, owever, I note that as it goes along more and more familiar Cummings poetical devices, such as wordsmergedtogether

and

idiosyncratic use of whitespace - and punctuation CAPITALIZATION abound
- lendingintensity as one approaches the CLIMAX.

Made me more interested in ballet than previously. ( )