NOBODY LOSES ALL
THE TIME
ee cummings
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About the poet
• Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
• He was the son of a professor at Harvard University.
• Cummings' parents supported his creative gifts of writing and drawing;
he wrote a poem daily from the time he was 8 till he turned 22.
• He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
1915 and a Master of Arts degree in 1916.
• In 1917, with the First World War ongoing in Europe, Cummings enlisted
in the Ambulance Corps because he freely expressed anti-war views.
• He was soon arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage
and undesirable activities and detained in a military detention camp.
• Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, The
Enormous Room (1922), a fictionalized account of his French captivity.
• Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day 1918 and
was later that same year drafted into the army where he served until
November 1918.
• He spent two years in Paris before returning to New York.
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About the poet
• His first anthology Tulips and Chimneys was published in 1923 and XLI Poems was published in 1925.
• With these, Cummings established his reputation as an avant garde poet (conventional punctuation and syntax were
ignored).
• He was also ranked among the best love poets of his time.
• After his father's death in a car accident in 1926 Cummings began to focus on more important aspects of life and
death in his poetry.
• In 1952, his alma mater, Harvard University, awarded Cummings an honorary seat as a guest professor.
• He died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in New Hampshire.
• Cummings was married briefly twice, first to Elaine Orr, then to Anne Minnerly Barton.
• His longest relationship, however, lasted more than three decades, a common-law marriage to Marion Morehouse.
• Cummings used capital letters only irregularly in his verse and when publishers began lowercasing his name offered no
objection, but he himself capitalized his name in his signature and in the title pages of original editions of his books.
• A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise, employing a few key words, often combining two common words into a
new synthesis.
• These carefully selected words were eccentrically placed on the page.
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•
•
•
•
•
E E Cummings was known for being
iconoclastic (breaking rules; critiquing
certain beliefs & institutions).
The poet had creative orthography (an
orthography is a set of conventions for
writing a language.
It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation,
capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and
punctuation) - which sometimes made it
difficult to interpret his poems.
He often wrote letters in all lower case—
perhaps to show humility.
He was a Dadaist—part of an artistic
movement which challenged existing
norms and ridiculed the senselessness of
the modern world.
Title and Stanza 1
nobody loses all the time
Title: ironic—Sol only succeeds
(unintentionally) after his death (the
greatest failure).
REPETITION of the title.
The TONE seems optimistic; with
perseverance comes success.
SPEAKER: Sol’s nephew.
FORM: Narrative.
SOL: means “sun” (Latin). The
sun gives life; eventually Sol
gives life to the worms as they
feed on him.
RECURRING IDEA: Death.
MODERNISM: Use of free verse without a set rhyme scheme or prominent rhythm.
Cumming also employs unusual syntax (removing capital letters and capitalising certain words, as
well as an unconventional use of punctuation, spelling, word order and making up new words
(neologisms).
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Stanza 2
“vaudeville”- A type of
entertainment popular in the
late 19th and early 20th
centuries consisting of a variety
of singing, dancing, and comic
acts.
i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
PARODY: a piece of writing or
music that deliberately copies
another work in a comic or
satirical way.
Poet appears to ridicule/mock
the speech and education of
Southerners.
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
PARALLEL: between the
disorganisation of the poem
(structure, punctuation,
etc.) and Sol’s
disorganisation (lack of
planning to run a successful
farm.)
A song title
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle
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The story: the poem tells the life
story of the speaker’s uncle (probably
not Cummings’ own uncle due to his
upbringing vs words such as
“highfalootin” and “Missouri”). He
was born a “failure” (unlucky).
Many said that Sol should go into
“vaudeville” because of his singing
abilities, and that perhaps he was
deceived by this ability that he could
be successful in other “luxuries” such
as farming which is rather a necessity
than a luxury.
The remainder of the story explains
why Sol was inapt and why
everything he attempted failed.
Stanza 3
Unforgivable, intolerable, unpardonable.
Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
pretentious
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
Highfalutin: pretentious
(affecting a grand style in an
unconvincing way), grandiose,
pompous, snobbish.
Southern Dialect (links to
“Missouri” in line 32). Could
indicate that the speaker is
uneducated/ he is prejudiced.
Parody: this poem is possibly a
social commentary on the
“Southern” culture—people
living in rural areas were
ridiculed as being unintelligent.
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added
Modern saying:
“needless to say...”
Thus the outcome of
Sol’s attempt at farming
could be predicted.
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Sol’s ATTITUDE: Initially he
seems adaptable—if one
thing fails, he tries new
ventures.
Stanza 4
my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
TONE:
• Conversational/
colloquial.
• Natural speech
patterns are reflected
in the free verse style.
• Informal, entertaining
diction is used
throughout the poem.
Lack of PUNCTUATION:
enjambment causes the poem
to run continuously reflecting
the style of storytelling. It might
also reinforce the idea that the
speaker is uneducated.
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when
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TONGUE-IN-CHEEK HUMOUR: humorous
or sarcastic statement expressed in a
mock serious manner.
Stanza 5
my Uncle Sol
IRONIC: suicide is not subtle.
had a skunk farm but
MESSAGE: Possibilities:
• Southerners are more capable
than people give them credit
(cliché).
• Southerners would be more
effective if they stopped trying so
hard.
• Reference to society in general—
even those born with bad luck
sometimes succeed.
• The world is a strange place that
finds humour/delight in ironies.
• Life is more about resilience than
success.
the skunks caught cold and
as a consequence of
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner
TONE: Finally, the tone is satirical, wry,
mocking. Sol is victorious eventually in
becoming food for worms after he was
quite unsuccessful in life.
Reasons for the farm’s failure:
• The farm failed initially because,
although it was a “vegetable”
farm, the “chickens / ate the
vegetables” which Sol did not
foresee because he was “a born
failure”.
• The “skunks [then] ate the
chickens” which Sol did not
prevent.
• Sol then “had a skunk farm”
(ironically), but “[they] caught
cold and died” (usually a cold is
easily treatable, but he was
unlucky).
S
L
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Stanza 6
or by drowning himself in the watertank
As a consequence of the farm’s
failure, Uncle Sol commits suicide
by “drowning himself in the
watertank” (water tank).
“Victor Victrola” - Old record
player. Someone believed in
Sol’s singing abilities and
therefore gave him a record
player. This same person
attends Sol’s funeral (he might
not have committed suicide if
he had taken a different career
path).
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
Fortunate, promising, favourable, lucky.
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
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Stanza 6: although Sol had an
unsuccessful life, he had a
marvelous funeral (it was
“splendiferous”) with
undertakers (“tall boys with
black gloves”), as well as
“flowers and everything”.
People mourned Sol’s death as
“[they] all cried like the
Missouri” (cried like a river).
Stanza 6 (cont.) and 7
Delicious, delectable, mouth-watering, tasty
scrumptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
Magnificent, splendid, wonderful, excellent
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
Speaker is amazed at the effort put into the funeral
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
SIMILE
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
IRONY—after all of Sol’s
failure, he finally succeeds in
starting a “farm” for worms
which will feed off his body.
Comical—Sol had to die to be
successful.
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol
and started a worm farm)
Missouri—large river in
USA. This suggests that the
funeral (and the farm) is
close to this river.
SIMILE: those attending the
funeral cried so much that
their tears are compared to
the water in the Missouri
river.
IRONIC: Sol has a wonderful
funeral after he was successful
at committing suicide.
TONE: Finally, the tone is
satirical, wry, mocking.
Sol is victorious
eventually in becoming
food for worms after he
was quite unsuccessful in
life.
(THE
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COFFIN)