Happy Birthday e. e. cummings

e. e. cummings (as he wrote his name) experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques, and structures to create a new, highly exclusive means of poetic expression....

 

October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962

 

 

 

 

Edward Estlin Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright. His body of work encompasses more than 900 poems, several plays and essays, numerous drawings, sketches, and paintings, as well as two novels. His works can easily be found at our sister site;
http://oldpoetry.com

 

http://oldpoetry.com/oauthor/show/e_e_cummings

 

Publishers and others have sometimes echoed the unconventional capitalization in his poetry by writing his name in lower case and without periods. Cummings himself used both the lowercase and capitalized versions. According to his widow he did not, as reported in the preface of one book, have his name legally changed to e. e. cummings. He did, however, write to his French translator that he preferred the capitalized version or so it is speculated.

 

Today, one Cummings scholar considers that for the poet to have signed his name all-lowercase may have been a gesture of humility, but for others to do so would be an act of loftiness.

 

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister, Edward Cummings. From a very early age, His mother, Rebecca Haswell Clarke, urged Estlin to keep a journal, and write in it daily.

 

One of his most whimsical works is "may i feel said he"

 

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/8764-e-e-cummings-may-i-feel-said-he

 

This work shares a back and forth voice both male and female. Likened unto a chase, or the hunter after the game...cummings ends the poem with one word capitalized; "Mine". Which I am sure cause all readers to chuckle or smile. Such, a man of wonder and wit.

 

As well as being influenced by notable sources modernists including Stein and Pound, Cummings' early work drew upon the imagery experiments of Amy Lowell. Later his visits to Paris exposed him to Dada and surrealism, which in turn permeated his work. He also liked to incorporate nature and death imagery into much of his poetry.

 

In 1917, Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corp, along with his college friend John Dos Passos. The novelty of automotives, and thus ambulances, made driving acceptable to young, well educated men in the US. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He became enamored with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.

 

On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a friend, William Slater Brown, were arrested on suspicion of espionage (the two openly expressed pacifist views on the war). They were sent to a military detention camp, where they languished for 3 1/2 months. Cummings' experiences in the camp were later related in his novel "The Enormous Room" about which F. Scott Fitzgerald stated; "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives- 'The Enormous Room' by e e cummings...Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."

 

He was released from the detention camp on December 19, 1917, after much intervention from his politically connected father. Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day 1918. Later in 1918, he was drafted into the army. He served in the 73rd Infantry Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November 1918.

 

Cummings returned to Paris in 1921 and remained there for two years before returning to New York. During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s he returned to Paris a number of times, and traveled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso. In 1931 Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union and recounted his experiences in "Eimi", published two years later. During these years Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa, and Mexico, and worked as an essayist, and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924 to 1927).

 

His prose narrative; "The Enormous Room (1922)", a recollection of his imprisonment, brought instant acclaim. Several volumes of poetry followed. His experiments with punctuation, line division, and capitalization make his work immediately recognizable. In a letter to young poets published in a high school newspaper, Cummings said; "Nothing is quite so easy as using words like somebody else. We, all of u,s do exactly this nearly all the time, and whenever we do it, we're not poets."

 

The seeds of Cummings' unconventional style appear well established, even in his earliest work. At age six he wrote to his father:

 

"FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD, HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN, FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR, LOVE, YOU DEAR, ESTLIN".

 

Some of Cummings' most famous poems do not involve much, if any, odd typography or punctuation, but still carry his unmistakable style. For example, the aptly titled; "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

 

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/8284-e-e-cummings-anyone-lived-in-a-pretty-how-town

 

His style is unmatched and has to sometimes be read several times to fully understand where he might be coming from or going to. His poem; "why must itself up every of a park" begins as follows:

 

"why must itself up every of a park anus stick some quote statue unquote to prove that a hero equals any jerk who was afraid to dare to answer "no"? "

 

I had to read this three times to see that he was poking fun at people who seemingly always say yes, when they should by all means sometimes say no. Now provided that may not mean what he means at all because poetry is indeed subjective. I guess one would have to continue on with the poem to get the full understand but that stanza alone left me without understanding on the first read. The poem is not posted on OldPoetry so, I will have to put it there and leave a link as an edit to this column. Here is the remainder of the poem.

 

"quote citizens unquote might otherwise forget(to err is human;to forgive divine)that if the quote state unquote says "kill" killing is an act of christian love. "Nothing" in 1944 AD "can stand against the argument of mil itary necessity"(generalissimo e) and echo answers "there is no appeal from reason"(freud)--you pays your money and you doesn't take your choice. Ain't freedom grand"

 

In conclusion...you either love cummings or hate him, there seems to be no middle passage with this poet. Some say he was brilliant, still others protest that idea. My favorite work by this poet is called; "i carry your heart with me"

 

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/6301-e-e-cummings-i-carry-your-heart-with-me

 

Take a moment to come by OP and read some of the works of e e cummings. He may surprise you with his wit and love of the art of poetry.

 

Let's say Happy Birthday to one of America's most familiar literary names.