Edward Estlin Cummings was a creative genius, who lived in a time period where the world's fate was dubious and rapidly changing. Refusing to combat this evolution with cut and dry poetry, Cummings played a significant role in the Modernist movement in which conformity was looked down upon. In essence, confusion was combated with confusion during this movement, which was criticized by scholars such as Richard Aldington, who professed "the age is incoherent.is no reason why art generally.should be incoherent." E. E. Cummings" (a common misconception is that he had his name legally changed to all lowercase letters, however the E.E. Cummings Society refutes that statement, saying he only signed certain poems that way) poetry can be interpreted by following his life story, as the two are often closely linked.
Born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, E.E. Cummings came into a very intellectual family. His father was a sociology professor at Harvard and a noted Unitarian clergyman, and his mother was the person responsible for introducing E.E. to poetry at a very young age. In high school, E.E. Cummings took a keen interest in art, especially in such modernist painting styles as cubism and futurism. This knowledge of the visual arts led to his tendency to experiment with punctuation, compressed words, unusual typography, line division, and capitalization in his writing from an early age. .
In 1911, Cummings followed in his father's footsteps and enrolled at Harvard University as an English major. There, he frequently wrote for the Harvard Monthly, criticizing paintings and creating poetry which already embodied the distinctive style he would use for the rest of his life. From the beginning of his professional writing career, Cummings has been misunderstood. In his first published poetry, E.E. Cummings used his signature lower-case pronoun "i" which symbolized the uniqueness and humbleness of the individual.
EE Cummings "Ride a watersmooth-silver/ stallion (4-5)," only a poem would allow somebody to imagine a dream like that. ... One poet in particular is ee cummings. ... Cummings through many poems shows a different style of writing which makes the poems interesting to read. With the style of writing cummings shows themes such as nature, human spirit, death, and hatred. ... "ee cummings." ...
Cummings One of America's noted modern poets, Edward Estlin Cummings, was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... (Kidder 16) The drawings presented in The Dial followed the form and norm of the current artistic style, but his poetry showed signs of progression into the rising Modernist movement. ... Cummings with his first glimpses of nature's wonder. ... Cummings gave America a new style of writing that has yet to be duplicated (with any success). ... Cummings The Poet ...
The Poetry of E. E. Cummings E. E. Cummings, who was born in 1894 and died in 1962, wrote many poems with unconventional punctuation and capitalization, and unusual line, word, and even letter placements - namely, ideograms. Cummings' most difficult form of prose is probably the ideo...
He also began incorporating elements of these styles into his own poetry and paintings. ... Critical opinion of Cummings's poems is markedly divided. Beginning with Tulips and Chimneys, reviewers described Cummings's style as eccentric and self-indulgent, designed to call attention to itself rather than to elucidate themes. ... Critics have noted, too, that Cummings's style did not change or develop much throughout his career. Some commentators speculate that Cummings early found a style that suited him and simply continued on with it; others, however, have faulted the author fo...
Other writers criticized Cummings for his unique style of writing. Alfred Kazin says that the poet's style is "arrogant" and "slap stick" and that Cummings is "the duality of the traditionalist and the clown" (155). ... Cummings uses an assortment of tools for his style. Cummings" style not only includes line breaks, but run on and joined words as well. ... Since Cummings has an individual and unusual style of writing, some points need to be taken into consideration. ...
Cummings" early life inspired his writing from his college days all the way until his last words. ... Cummings was among the first to question modern America, and at the same time, create a unique writing style that would later distinguish him among the greatest writers in history. ... As war continued to rage through the world, Cummings" continued to write his concerns. ... Because of his background as a WWI soldier, Cummings probably writes this poem as a personal account of his feelings of wanting to escape the murderous trenches of Europe. ... "i sing of Olaf" is a perfect example of C...
Cummings uses new words to create imagery. ... Cummings introduces the evil balloonman. ... Cummings' best poems about sex fully and precisely render this relationship.... ... In general, Cummings' poetry reflects his long life-love of nature... >In his poetry, Cummings celebrates the interanimation of man and nature. ...
Cummings E. ... Four of Cummings' poems - l(a, mortals), !... Cummings first tightly written ideogram was !... Cummings had written a letter concerning !... Cummings (see Works Cited). ...
If ever there was a poet to be frustrate to the computer, it was e. e. cummings. ... His uncharacteristic style, however, is not the reason I chose his poem "pity this busy monster, manunkind" to analyze. ... The first two lines of the poem sets up cummings sarcastic style well, first telling the reader to "pity this busy monster, manunkind," and then modifying the clause at the beginning of the following line (which has an additional space between the two lines) with "not." cummings was then fifty years early on the everyday use of "not" at the end of a sentence as a sarcastic device. .....