E.E. Cummings was one of the most innovative poets in American literature. He is especially known for violating the rules of composition, rejecting punctuation, and capitalization (Costello 1). Cummings wrote prolifically: nearly 800 poems, plays, ballets, fairy tales, and autobiographies (Smelstor 2). Mr. Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the first born of twochildren, his parents were Edward Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke (Smelstor 2). In 1899, his family bought Joy Farm, an idyllic retreat the White Mountains. This is where Cummings would spend most of his summers. The pastoral surroundings and good country neighbors instilled in him a love of nature, simple pleasures, and humble, decent folk (Bloom 12). These things became common themes of his poetry (Bloom 12). Cummings enrolled in Harvard in 1911, and focused his studies on classics and literature, graduating magna cum laude four years later and staying on an extra year to earn his masters in English (Bloom 12). By 1915, he had earned a M.A. in English and classical studies (Aliprandini 1). After graduation Cummings moved to New York and obtained his first and only job as a clerk for a mail-order bookseller. Three months later he quit and went to work full-time on his poetry and paintings (Bloom 13). The following year he sailed for France as a volunteer in the Morton Harjes Ambulance Corps of the American Red Cross (Smelstor 2). Incarcerated in France during the First World War for subordination by the American army, he was skeptical of Uncle Sam, but, after being spied on during a trip to Russia in the '30s, he berated the Communist project that captivated many of his artist friends (Doherty 61). In Normandy, the... ... middle of paper ... ...crippled by arthritis and wore a brace that forced him to conduct these readings while sitting in a straight backed kitchen chair (Smelstor 2). His family divided their time between New York and his family farm in New Hampshire until his death from a stroke (Aliprandini 2). Cummings was an amazing writer and he is well know for it. He had very different techniques of his writing. His poems for example, had more than just writing. They had personality and individuality. Works Cited Aliprandini, Michael E.E. Cummings. New York: Great Neck Publishing, 2005. Bloom, Harold. Biography of E.E. Cummings. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2003. "Cummings, E.E." World Book Online InfoFinder. World Book, 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Doherty, Mike. E.E. Cummings: A Life. Toronto: Rogers Publishing, 2004. Print. Smelstor, Marjorie, ed. E.E. Cummings. New York: Salem Press, 2006.
Gwendolyn Brooks was an extremely influential poet. Her poems inspired many people. Brooks’ career started after publishing her first poem Eventide. This poem started Brooks’ career as a well-known American poet.
...ail. He was crippled with arthritis until he died on March 30, 1967 in Doylestown. Many people now look up to Toomer as a
Baldwin, James. A. Notes of a Native Son.? 1955. The. James Baldwin: Collected Essays.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers to date. His thrill filled tales of darkness and death helped people see a different side of romantic literature. Many believe that his isolated life and drinking problem helped influence his works. Poe showed his most prominent life accomplishment and disappointments through his life in his stories. He defined a lot of his life’s parallels through his works.
cummings, e. e. "since feeling is first." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson et al. 5th ed., shorter. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
“pity this busy monster, manunkind” it must be analyzed with Cummings’s life and what was going in the world at the time it was written in mind.
One example from the text that shows Cummings have the incredible heroic trait of humility is found on page 120 of the Good Soldiers. In lines 150-152, Cummings says,”man ,I haven’t felt this good since i got to this hellhole”.
Edward Estlin Cummings, commonly referred to as E. E. Cummings, was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a source of vast knowledge and was responsible for many creative works other than his poetry, such as novels, plays, and paintings. He published his first book of poetry Tulips and Chimneys in 1923. Many of his poems are known for the visual effects they create through his unusual placement of words on the page, as well as, his lack of punctuation and capitalization. The manner in which Cummings arranges the words of his poems creates an image in the reader's mind of the topic he is discussing, such as a season or climbing stairs. His visual style also brings emotions, such as loneliness or cheerfulness, to the reader's mind. Due to this creativity, Cummings won many awards, such as the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize in poetry (Marks 17).
Shynn Felarca Mrs. Cox English Honors-Period 5 Due Date: 20 November 2015 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson A while back there were many poems and poets. Like Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, a romantic poet who put many deep meanings behind her poems, even if her poems were all mostly about death. When she was alive she was an unknown poet, but throughout the years she became well known.
Is the of style e. e. cummings' poetry its true genius, or the very reason the works should be called drivel? 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). Others, such as Richard P. Blackmur, say his technique is an insult to the writing profession. He says that cummings' poetry would only appeal to those with a "childish spirit"(140). It was Mark Van Doren, though, who probably said the truth about cummings. "He has a richly sensuous mind; his verse is distinguished by fluidity and weight; he is equipped to range lustily and long among the major passions"(140) Through examples of his work, "from spiralling ecstatically this," Buffalo Bill's," "next to of course god america I," and "whippoorwill this," it can be show that cummings is a deliberate, inventive, and precise poet who uses his own, unique style.
A gradual dream-like state is suggested to the poem’s audience by cummings’s “far and wee” refrain, which is given increasing white space and therefore longer pauses, until each word of the refrain supports its own line. Initially the refrain complements the speaker’s excited springtime revelry; in fact, line five flows nicely...
Wegner, Robert E. The Poetry and Prose of E.E. Cummings. New York: Hartcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965.
Throughout his poetry, E. E. Cummings seduces readers deep into a thicket of scrambled words, missing punctuation, and unconventional structure. Within Cummings's poetic bramble, ambiguity leads the reader through what seems at first a confusing and winding maze. However, this confusion actually transforms into a path that leads the reader to the center of the thicket where Cummings's message lies: one should never allow one's experience to be limited by reason and rationality. In order to communicate his belief that emotional experience should triumph over reason, Cummings employs odd juxtapositions, outlandish metaphors, and inversions of traditional grammatical structures that reveal the "illogic" of reason. By breaking down the formal boundaries of his poetic structures, Cummings urges his readers to question boundaries of any kind. Indeed, in the same manner Cummings's literary style appears to be uncontrolled; many of his poems, such as "since feeling is first" and "as freedom is a breakfastfood," in turn suggest that emotion provides the compositional fabric for our experience of life, and therefore, emotion itself should never be defined or controlled.
Throughout this poem Cummings gets across several points. He is able to illustrate the conflict between old age and youth, yet also show how they come together. His specific writing style gets the credit for this. In only a few short stanzas he is able to write about the irony of the cycle of life that really makes the reader thing. At a second read of the poem the reader is able to pick up indirect points. Then after analyzing, the reader understands that all the small points can be joined together to perfectly describe the gap between the elderly and the younger generation.
Edward Estlin Cummins was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894 and died on September 3, 1962 in, New Hampshire. He was 67 and was buried at Forest hills Cemetery. He was married twice very briefly, his first wife was Elaine Orr, but their marriage started off as a love affair in 1918 while she was also married to Scofirled Thayer, one of Cummings friend from Harvard. During the course of their marriage Cummings wrote a lot of erotic poetry. During the affair they had a child named Nancy which would end up being Cummings only child. His father was a professor and a minister, and his mother instilled in the youngster, a love of language and play. Two of Cummings inspirations for all of his work were Amy Lowell, and Gertrude. A lot of his inspiration also came from his three month imprisonment because the French military accused him of espionage (the practice of spying or using spies). E.E. Cummings work greatly influenced the transcendentalist movement and changed the way poets approached language and particularly punctuation.