by jessie sidhu and liz abramov

By Jessie Sidhu and Liz Abramov

E.E. CUMMINGS

Edward Estlin Cummings 2900 poems 2 autobiographical

novels 4 plays

Artist as well 1962, second most

widely read poet in the USA (after Robert Frost)

e.e. cummings

Carnbridge, MA 1894 Began writing- 1904 Harvard

1915- B.A. 1916- M.A.

Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound

1917- First Book Eight Harvard Poets

Biography

Named after his father, Edward Cummings

Father-Harvard Graduate Married three times 1932- Married Marion Morehouse

(model/actress) 30 years

Biography

5 months ambulance driver in World War II

Sent to French prison camp Novel: The Enormous Room

Traveled through Europe Pablo Picasso

Elizabethan Song, 18th Century Satire, Pindaric Ode

Buried in Boston, MA (1962)

Biography

Academy of American Poets Fellowship

Two Guggenheim Fellowships

Charles Eliot Norton Professorship (Harvard)

Bollinger Prize in Poetry (1958)

Ford Foundation Grant

Honors

Disordered syntax + typographical disarrangements

Arranged derangement, integers of the word curve of ‘e’, rhythm of ‘m’, astonishment of ‘o’

Word coinage kept already existing root words, joining to them new affixes

Poets Style

Tmesis his signature

Varied use of parentheses

“Visual stanza” not rhyme/ meter, but shape thought

Free verse

Visual appearance of most poems=based on interest in contemporary art forms

Poets Style

Use of space + punctuation marks Comma used where period is expected

Words were literary art If the printer messed up on a word- interfere

with his “arrangement”

Themes of poems Love + nature

Incorporated imagery about nature and death

Poets style

At early age, most critics thought of him as a potential lyric & satiric poet

Critics believed that his innovative verse techniques & his lyric/satiric talents successfully blended

Structure of poems connected to meaning of poems

Positive Criticism

Thought techniques were: Cheap and shallow not poetic

Style made critics upset, said it was; Unusual and thought style to call attention to itself rather than

to describe a theme Objected explicit treatment of sexuality

Believe style didn’t evolve throughout career Structure drew readers’ attention from actual poem Many critics believed he didn’t develop much as a

writer through his career

Negative Criticism

e.e. cummings

“I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries… that ‘an artist, a man, a failure’ is… a naturally and miraculously whole human being… whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.”

Unique poet Original artist Incredible modernist poet of consequence