e. e. cummings - the poet with no capitals

e. e. cummings

(1894-1962)

"i am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mistery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters 'a very good god damn'; that 'an artist, a man, a failure' is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feeling illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to trancend himself, whose every agony is to grow"

links to poetry:

since feeling is first

i sing of olaf glad and big

somewhere

i like my body when it is with yours

if i should sleep with a lady called death
interpretation of previous poem

link to a letter from e. e. cummings himself

the poems to come are for you and for me....

a biography over the life of e. e. cummings:

edward estlin cummings was born on october 14, 1894 in cambridge mass. he died on september 3, 1962 in conway new hampshire. son of edward cummings and rebecca haswell.

after recieving his b.a. and m.a. from harvard, in english and classics, he volunteered to go to france durring wwI with the norton-harges ambulance corps in 1917. he wrote letters back to his family about the war. the french became nervous, and had him arrested on suspicion of treason and sent to a prison camp for three months that same year. after being released from the prison camp he returned home for about one year then drafted into the US army. he only stayed there for one year as a private from 1918 to 1919. after the war he stayed in paris as an writer and a painter, and continued his affair with elaine thayer, his bestfriend's wife.

his first marriage of six months was to elaine with whom he had his only daughter nancy, who did not know that cummings was her real father until she was almost 30. his second marriage was to ann barton which lasted four years. and his third and final marriage was to marion morehouse which lasted the remaining 30 years of his life. before his death cummings wrote captions to accompany photographs taken by his wife marion. Adventures in Values, exemplifies his lifelong effort see deeply enough to confront the miraculousness of the natural. of the neoromatic inclinations consider him one of their ancestors, although cummings produced no significant following.

awards:

dial award 1925 for distinguished service to american letters
levinson prise for poetry 1939
shelley memoral award for poetry society of america in 1945
academy of american poets fellowship, 1950
harriet monroe poetry award, 1950
eunice teitjens memorial prize in poetry, 1952
national book award special citation, 1955
bollingen prize in poetry at yale university, 1958
oscar blumenthal prize, 1962

Writings:

e. e. cummings wrote his books and poems about his life experiences from war and his marriages. his first wife elaine, inspired his first "erotic" poems. most of his early love poems were intended to shock the puritanicals of the ninteen twenties. "i sing of a olaf glad an big" and his first published book the enormous room were inspired by the time he spent in the war and in prison. e. e. cummings was ahead of his time with his writings. they shocked a lot of the people durring the twenties because of the poems frankness. we believe that e. e. cummings did not like war, and that he may have been tramatized by the amount of death that he saw while working with the ambulance corp. e. e. cummings wrote about all his experiances in life leaving nothing out and revealing himself to the public or so we think....

how do you really spell his name?

in his works cummings always gave his name in lowercase letters without punctuation. no one is sure why he always wrote his name in lowercase, some think that he didn't want one letter to feel more superior than another letter, but that is just a guess. i guess you'll have to draw your own conclusion.