E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), typically abbreviated E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright. Though a representation not endorsed by him, his publishers often mirrored his atypical syntax by writing his name in lowercase, e. e. cummings.

Cummings is probably best known for the unusual style used in many of his poems, which includes unorthodox usage of both capitalisation and punctuation, in which unexpected and seemingly misplaced punctuation sometimes interrupt sentences and even individual words. Several of his poems are also typeset on a page in an unusual fashion, and appear to make little sense until read aloud.

Despite Cummings' affinity for avant garde styles and for unusual typography, much of his work is traditional; for instance, many of his poems are sonnets. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of love and nature, as well as satire and the relationship of the individual the masses and to the world.

During his lifetime, he published more than 900 poems, along with two novels, several essays, as well as numerous drawings, sketches, and paintings. He is remembered as one of the preeminent voices of twentieth-century poetry.

Life

In his youth Cummings attended the Cambridge Latin High School. Many of his early stories and poems were published in the Cambridge Review, the school newspaper.

From 1911 to 1916 Cummings attended Harvard, from which he received a B.A degree in 1915 and a Master's degree for English and Classical Studies in 1916. Also while at Harvard, he met and befriended John Dos Passos. Several of Cummings' poems were published, beginning in 1912, in the Harvard Monthly, a school newspaper on which Cummings worked with his friends Dos Passos and S. Foster Damon.

From an early age, Cummings studied the classical languages of Greek and Latin. His affinity for both can be seen in his later works, such as XAIPE (the title of one of his collections and "Rejoice!" in Greek), Anthropos (the title of one of his plays and "mankind" in Greek), and "Puella Mea" (the title of his longest poem, and "My Girl" in Latin).

Cummings graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1915, and delivered the commencement address, entitled "The New Art". In his final year at Harvard, he came under the influence of the works of avant garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. His first published poems appeared in a collection of poetry entitled Eight Harvard Poets in 1917.

Cummings went to France in 1917 as a volunteer for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in the First World War. However, due to an organisational mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to unit for five weeks, during which he stayed in Paris. During this time Cummings became enamored with the city, which he would return to throughout his life. Cummings was eventually assigned to an ambulance unit, though, after five months, he and a friend, William Slater Brown, were arrested on 21 September 1917 on suspicion of espionage (the two openly expressed pacifist views on the war). The two were sent to a detention camp, the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy for 3½ months. Cummings' experiences in the camp are later related in his novel The Enormous Room.

He was released from the camp on 19 December 1917, after much intervention from his father. Cummings returned to the United States on New Years' Day 1918. Later in 1918, he was drafted into the army. He served in the 73rd Infantry Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November 1918.

Cummings returned to Paris, France in 1921 and remained there for two years before returning to New York. During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s he returned to Paris a number of times, and travelled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso. In 1931 Cummings travelled to the Soviet Union and recorded his experiences in Eimi, published two years later. During these years Cummings also travelled to Northern Africa and Mexico. Also, from 1924 to 1927, he worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine.

In 1926, Cummings' father, whom he was close to, and whom was one of Cummings' most ardent supporters, was killed suddenly and tragically in a car accident. Though severely injured, Cummings' mother survived, and lived for more than twenty years until her death in 1947. Cummings detailed the accident in the following quote, from Richard S. Kennedy's biography of Cummings, Dreams in the Mirror :

"... a locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing- dazed but erect- beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away."

Cummings was married three times. His first marriage, to Elaine Orr, began as a love affair in 1919 while she was married to Scofield Thayer, one of Cummings' friends from Harvard. The affair produced a daughter, Nancy, who was born on 20 December 1919. Nancy was Cummings' only child. After obtaining a divorce from Thayer, Elaine and Cummings married on 19 March 1924. However, the marriage ended in divorce less than nine months later, when Elaine left Cummings for a wealthy Irish banker, moving to Ireland and taking Nancy with her. Although under the terms of the divorce, Cummings was granted custody of Nancy for three months each year, Elaine refused to honour the agreement. Cummings did not see his daughter again until 1946.

Cummings married his second wife, Anne Minnerly Barton, on 1 May 1929. The two separated three years later in 1932. That same year, Anne obtained a divorce in Mexico, although it was not officially recognised in the United States until August 1934.

In 1932, the same year he and his second wife separated, Cummings met Marion Morehouse, a fashion model and photographer. Although it is not clear if the two were ever officially married, Morehouse would live with Cummings for the remainder of his life, and is considered to have been at the least his common-law wife.

In 1952, his alma mater, Harvard University, awarded Cummings the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship, a honorary seat as a guest professor. The lectures he gave in 1952 and 1953 were later collected as i:six nonlectures. Cummings spent the last decade of his life largely travelling, fulfilling speaking engagements, and spending time at his summer home, Joy Farm, in New Hampshire.

Cummings died in 1962 in North Conway, New Hampshire, after having a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 67. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachussetts.

Cummings' poetic style

Additionally, a number of Cummings' poems feature in part or in whole intentional misspellings; several feature phonetic spellings intended to represent particular dialects. Cummings also made use of inventive formations of compound words, as in "in Just-", which features words such as "mud-lucious" and "puddle-wonderful".

Many of Cummings' poems address social issues and satirise society, but have an equal or even stronger bias toward romanticism: time and again his poems celebrate love, sex and spring. His talent extended to children's books, novels, and painting. A notable example of his versatility is an introduction he wrote for a collection of his favorite comic strip, Krazy Kat.

An example of Cumming's unorthodox typographical style can be seen in his poems "the sky was candy luminous..." and "a leaf falls on loneliness".

Criticisms

Cummings as a painter

Beginning with his years at Harvard and continuing on into the 1920s, Cummings identified with the artistic movements of cubism, dadaism, and surrealism. He particularly admired the work of Pablo Picasso.

Cummings first received critical acclaim for his drawings and caricatures published in the literary magazine the Dial during the 1920s. Cummings later gained recognition as a painter, participating in a number of art shows. He also published CIOPW, a collection of works in the mediums charcoal, ink, oil, pastel, and watercolour, in 1931.

List of shows