News at Eleven: Those odd blank gaps within lines,

a frequent choice in [Grace] Paley's verse, and her paucity of capitalization and punctuation, create a somewhat E. E. Cummings effect; but then Cummings owed much to Emily Dickinson. Where Dickinson used capitals and dashes to create unexpected pauses, and thus to heighten meaning, Paley uses lowercase letters and white space. It's hard not to hear Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who are you?/Are you--Nobody--too?" behind Paley's untitled poem that begins "before I was nobody/I was me after/I was nobody I/was me."

from The New York Times: At the Last Minute

~~~~~~~~~~~