E.E. Cummings

Early Life Born in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts Full name is Edward Estlin Cummings Father was a professor at Harvard University Began writing poetry when he was 10 years old; his mother encouraged him to write Received his BA in English and Greek from Harvard in 1914, and his MA in 1915 While at Harvard he became interested in Modern and Avant-Garde poetry, particularly imagism

WWI Like many writers of his generation, he was shaped by his experience of WWI In 1917, Cummings volunteered to serve in an ambulance group in France He and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage for his outspoken anti-war convictions His only novel, The Enormous Room (1922), is based on his experience in the camp

New York and Paris In the 1920s, Cummings frequently travelled between his home in New York and Paris In Paris he met many famous artists and authors, including Pablo Picasso Cummings himself was a painter who belonged to the Cubist movement like Picasso He published three major works of poetry in the 1920s that exhibited his distinct style: Tulips and Chimneys (1923), XLI Poems (1925) and & (1925)

Style Began by following Pound’s Imagist principles, but soon developed his own unique style “An unabashed Romantic in his view of life and an avant-garde modernist seeking to explore unusual means of expression” Experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression Yet frequently explored very traditional themes such as love and nature he employed verbs as nouns, and other locutions as new linguistic creations (for example, "wherelings, whenlings / daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear / sons of unless and children of almost / never shall guess"). He indulged in free play with punctuation and capitalization. Lowercase letters were the rule; capitals were used only for special emphasis; punctuation marks were omitted for ambiguous statement; others were introduced for jarring effects. His use of the lowercase letter "i" not only became a well-known means of self-reference in his work, but also reflected a role that he created for himself: he was the underling, the unnoticed dreamer, the downtrodden one, the child in the man; yet by asserting his individuality in this way, he thrust himself forward and established a memorable persona. Because he was a painter as well as a poet, he had developed a unique form of literary cubism: he broke up his material on the page to present it in a new, visually directed way. Some of his poems had to be seen in their printed arrangement before they could be completely understood. "The day of the spoken lyric is past," he proclaimed. "The poem which has at last taken its place does not sing itself; it builds itself, three dimensionally, gradually, subtly, in the consciousness of the experiencer."

Political/Philosophical Views Valued whatever is instinctively human and promoted feeling and imagination, especially romantic and sexual love Rejected social forces that hinder the expression of individualism, especially whatever encourages group behavior, conformity, imitation, or artificiality Emphasized feeling and emotion rather than thought or analysis Regarded technology and the complexities of civilization as dehumanizing

To review... When and how was Cummings first exposed to modernist poetry? Why was he placed in a French prison camp during World War I? How did Cummings’ work as a painter influence his poetry? How could you describe the form and content of Cumming’s poetry? What were Cummings’ philosophical views?