E. E. Cummings' aesthetic and a comparison of his poetry and painting

E. E. Cummings refers to himself as both a painter and a poet. In the first of the Six Nonlectures he tells his audience that he has been learning "s a writer and as a paintert" several things. But when he "finds himself on the verge of attempting an aesthetic striptease" he feels this audience is interested only in "the self of the prose and of the poetry" and not in his "drawing and painting self. It