Exploring E.E. Cummings: Poet and Painter

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University graduating in 1916. During his life time he was a poet, writing twelve volumes of poetry, and was also a painter. As a poet, he was first recognized by readers for his unusual ways of phrasing poems and his usage of punctuation. Cummings also wrote traditionally styled verses such as sonnets. Cummings received a number of honors during his lifetime, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships.

E.E. Cummings writing style in the poem “Since feelings come first”, plays an indicative role in trying to understanding this poem. Cummings writes with vagueness and uses specific poetic elements such

In the first stanza we can see that all the words fit together and they express the same feeling. We can clearly see that the beginning of each line is not capitalized and that some thoughts are stopped, such as “to” and “attention” from line to line. When looking at the second stanza there is assonance. In the phrase “and kisses are a better fate” (Cummings, 1931, L.8) the “e” sound is the same in these words. We can see assonance again in the line “wholly to be a fool while spring is in the world” (Cummings, 1931, L.5-6) the “o” sounds in the words “to” and “fool” are the same. Cummings wrote the stanzas like this to show that the poem is meant to be tied together. Personification is also used in the third stanza "my blood approves"(Cummings, 1931, L7) giving human characteristics to something non-human. In this poem life is compared to a paragraph, and death is compared to parenthesis. Cummings seems to note that life and death cannot be summed up in poetry, or in any writing at all. He suggests that life is substantial and death is not an afterthought or an unimportant side note. Life and death are vital beginnings and endings which every person must face, and writing cannot begin to explain the extent those things possess. Cummings' use of contrast to make the reader understand the irrelevance of writing compared to living life to the