Edward
Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962),
known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by
others in lowercase letters as e e cummings (in the style of some of his
poems—see name and capitalization, below), was an American poet, painter,
essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately
2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as
well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as an eminent voice
of 20th century English literature.
Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, to
Edward Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke who were Unitarian. They were a
well-known family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a professor at
Harvard University and later the nationally known minister of Old South Church
in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother who loved to spend time with her children,
played games with Cummings and his sister, Elizabeth. From an early age,
Cummings's parents supported his creative gifts.
Cummings wrote poems and also
drew as a child, and he often played outdoors with the many other children who
lived in his neighborhood. He also grew up in the company of such family
friends as the philosophers William James (1842–1910) and Josiah Royce
(1855–1916). He graduated from Harvard University in 1915 and then received an
advanced degree from Harvard in 1916. Many of Cummings' summers were spent on
Silver Lake in Madison, New Hampshire where his father had built two houses
along the eastern shore. The family ultimately purchased the nearby Joy Farm
where Cummings' had his primary summer residence.
He exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. As
he grew in maturity and age, Cummings moved more toward an "I, Thou"
relationship with God. His journals are replete with references to "le bon
Dieu," as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such
as “Bon Dieu! May I someday do something truly great. Amen.”). Cummings
"also prayed for strength to be his essential self ('may I be I is the
only prayer—not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'), and
for relief of spirit in times of depression ('almighty God! I thank thee for my
soul; & may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of
loneliness')."
Cummings wanted to be a poet from childhood and wrote
poetry daily aged 8 to 22, exploring assorted forms. He went to Harvard and
developed an interest in modern poetry which ignored conventional grammar and
syntax, aiming for a dynamic use of language. Upon graduating, he worked for a
book dealer.
Cummings was married briefly twice, first to Elaine Orr,
then to Anne Minnerly Barton. His longest relationship lasted more than three
decades, a common-law marriage to Marion Morehouse.
Cummings's first marriage, to Elaine Orr, began as a love
affair in 1918 while she was still married to Scofield Thayer, one of
Cummings's friends from Harvard. During this time he wrote a good deal of his
erotic poetry. After divorcing Thayer, Elaine married Cummings on March 19,
1924. The couple had a daughter together out of wedlock, Nancy, born on
December 20, 1919. Nancy was Cummings's only child. However, the couple
separated after only two months of marriage and divorced less than nine months
later. Elaine left Cummings for a wealthy Irish banker, moved to Ireland, and
took Nancy with her. Under the terms of the divorce Cummings was granted
custody of Nancy for three months each year, but Elaine refused to abide by the
agreement. Cummings did not see his daughter again until 1946. Nancy later
married Joseph Willard Roosevelt, second son of Kermit Roosevelt and Belle Wyatt
Willard.
Cummings married his second wife Anne Minnerly Barton on
May 1, 1929, and they separated three years later in 1932. That same year, Anne
obtained a Mexican divorce; it was not officially recognized in the United
States until August 1934.
In 1934, after his separation from his second wife,
Cummings met Marion Morehouse, a fashion model and photographer. Although it is
not clear whether the two were ever formally married, Morehouse lived with
Cummings in a common-law marriage until his death in 1962. She died on May 18, 1969,
while living at 4 Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, New York City, where
Cummings had resided since September 8, 1924.
Despite Cummings's familiarity with avant-garde styles
(undoubtedly affected by the Calligrammes of Apollinaire, according to a
contemporary observation]), much of his work is quite traditional. Many of his
poems are sonnets, albeit often with a modern twist, and he occasionally made
use of the blues form and acrostics. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes
of love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses
and to the world. His poems are also often rife with satire.
While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with
the romantic tradition, Cummings' work universally shows a particular
idiosyncrasy of syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger
phrases and sentences. Many of his most striking poems do not involve any
typographical or punctuation innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
From "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in"
(1952)
As well as being influenced by notable modernists,
including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, Cummings in his early work drew upon
the imagist experiments of Amy Lowell. Later, his visits to Paris exposed him
to Dada and surrealism, which he reflected in his work. He began to rely on
symbolism and allegory where he once used simile and metaphor. In his later
work, he rarely used comparisons that required objects that were not previously
mentioned in the poem, choosing to use a symbol instead. Due to this, his later
poetry is "frequently more lucid, more moving, and more profound than his
earlier." Cummings also liked to incorporate imagery of nature and death
into much of his poetry.
While some of his poetry is free verse (with no concern
for rhyme or meter), many have a recognizable sonnet structure of 14 lines,
with an intricate rhyme scheme. A number of his poems feature a typographically
exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered
across the page, often making little sense until read aloud, at which point the
meaning and emotion become clear. Cummings, who was also a painter, understood
the importance of presentation, and used typography to "paint a picture"
with some of his poems.
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.
Following his autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room,
Cummings' first published work was a collection of poems entitled Tulips and
Chimneys (1923). This work was the public's first encounter with his
characteristic eccentric use of grammar and punctuation.
Some of Cummings' most famous poems do not involve much,
if any, odd typography or punctuation, but still carry his unmistakable style,
particularly in unusual and impressionistic word order.
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
From "anyone lived in a pretty how town" (1940)
Cummings' work often does not proceed in accordance with
the conventional combinatorial rules that generate typical English sentences
(for example, "they sowed their isn't"). His readings of Stein in the
early part of the century probably served as a springboard to this aspect of
his artistic development.[citation needed] In some respects, Cummings' work is
more stylistically continuous with Stein's than with any other poet or
writer.
In addition, a number of Cummings' poems feature, in part
or in whole, intentional misspellings, and several incorporate phonetic
spellings intended to represent particular dialects. Cummings also made use of
inventive formations of compound words, as in "in Just" which
features words such as "mud-luscious", "puddle-wonderful",
and "eddieandbill." This poem is part of a sequence of poems entitled
Chansons Innocentes; it has many references comparing the
"balloonman" to Pan, the mythical creature that is half-goat and
half-man. Literary critic R.P. Blackmur has commented that this usage of
language is “frequently unintelligible because he disregards the historical
accumulation of meaning in words in favour of merely private and personal
associations.”
Many of Cummings' poems are satirical and address social
issues but have an equal or even stronger bias toward romanticism: time and
again his poems celebrate love, sex, and the season of rebirth.
Cummings also wrote children's books and novels. A
notable example of his versatility is an introduction he wrote for a collection
of the comic strip Krazy Kat.
