Pierre Boulez once agreed to compose something for a concert in West Germany. The organizers soon wrote to the composer asking for the composition's title. "I haven't got one," he wrote back. "All I can tell you now is e. e. cummings is the poet I have chosen."

A few days later, he was surprised to receive another letter "regarding your work 'e. e. cummings ist der Dichter' [e. e. cummings is the poet]..." Boulez was considerably amused. "I could not have produced a better title," he later recalled, "than that which had come about completely by accident."