Biography
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E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings decided to become a poet when he was still a child.
Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, he wrote a poem a day.
By the time he was in Harvard in 1916, modern poetry had caught his interest. He
began to write avant-garde poems in which conventional punctuation and syntax
were ignored in favour of a dynamic use of language. (Founded the Harvard Poets
Society)
After Harvard, Cummings went to New York. In this city he held his first and only job,
three months with P. F. Collier Son, Inc., mail-order booksellers
In April of 1917 volunteered for Ambulance Service in France, a popular choice of
work for pacifists.
September of 1917 held on suspicion of treason and sent to an internment camp in
Normandy for questioning after inserting provocative comments in letters he was
censoring.
Cummings' first collection of poems, Tulips and Chimneys, appeared in 1923.
"The chief effect of Cummings' jugglery with syntax, grammar, and diction was
to blow open otherwise trite and bathetic motifs through a dynamic rediscovery
of the energies sealed up in conventional usage.... He succeeded masterfully in
splitting the atom of the cute commonplace." M. L. Rosenthal
Style Technique
Seasonal
Spring; brings positive tone to poems
Reminiscent (over pasts loves,
Influential people, memories)
-Feelings of deep romance, and love
for someone
-Filled with compliments, and positive
thoughts about a specific person
Realistic
-punctuation, spelling and syntax
“Life’s not a paragraph
and death i think is no
parenthesis”
~E.E. Cummings
•
Modernism
Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to
the emergence of city life as a central force in society and its
accompanying commercialism, consumerism and rejection of the
individual.
• Breakdown of social norms and despair of individuals amongst an
uncertain and unmanageable future
• Sense of spiritual loneliness, alienation, frustration and disillusionment
• Cummings had a strong belief in individuality, “his poems are constantly
exhorting us [the reader] to be original, independent, self-reliant. And he
is scornful of everyone who takes refuge in received ideas and
conventional standards” (Kirsch, Adam).
• This is a shift from a knowledge-based exploration to being-based.
• The meaning of Cummings' poems is generally the same as the meaning of
sunsets and rainbows. They don't mean, they just are!
• He greatly influenced the work of Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mansfield,
Woolf, Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hemingway
• “A poem should not mean / But be." Archibald MacLeish
-Love
-Passionate feelings
-Descriptive nature poems
-War
-Sex
-Dreams
-Past or Future (usually never present)
past loves
grievances
regrets
-Desire
wishing (to be with someone)
-Loneliness
In Justin Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little
lame balloon man
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
Balloon Man whistles
far
and
wee
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which
grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Literary Devices
*Dialogue
"he said, the wind said, the
rain answered“
*Questioning (unsureness)
"May I feel, said he"
"Do you believe in
always,the wind
said to the rain“
*Repitition
"I carry your heart with me, I
carry it in my heart.“
*Metaphor
"You open always petal by
petal myself as Spring
opens."
Negative Literary Criticism
We agree
“sentimental and politically naïve”
We agree that on some of the poetry, the emotion can turn the
poem too passionate, almost “sappy”.
We disagree
“Mr. Cummings has an eccentric system of typography
which, in our opinion, has nothing to do with the poem, but
intrudes itself irritatingly, like scratched or blurred
spectacles, between it and the reader's mind”
We belive the “extra” punctuation is anything but “extra”, it adds emotion,
and connection to the poem. We think the parenthesis for example, make
you feel as if you are in Cummings’s mind.
Positive Literary Criticism
We agree
“The poetry of E.E. Cummings* is easily recognizable, even for the literary novice. While
many immediately associate the work of Cummings with the liberal use of lowercase letters
and acrobatic word arrangement, the depth of his writing goes beyond this, both in form
and meaning.”
We think the deeper meanings and emotions, make more of an impression on the reader, that the unusual
punctuation.
We agree
Cummings's innovative and controversial verse places him among the most popular and
widely anthologized poets of the twentieth century. Cummings's work celebrates the
individual, as well as erotic and familial love. Conformity, mass psychology, and snobbery
were frequent targets of his humorous and sometimes scathing satires
After reading other poetry, we noticed his style is definitely recognizable, and all about love, some poems
are funny or sarcastic.
We agree
He created provocative drawings and impressionistic paintings with vivid colors. This artistic
style also molds his poetry into a visual art. He uses the white space on the page as much as
he uses periods, commas, and colons to lead the eye on a journey down the page.
We agree that Cumming’s poetry is art. The imagery, paints a picture in your mind.
Works Cited
Poets.org." The Academy of American Poets . 22 Apr 2007 < http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/156>.
Eich, Marty. "e.e. cummings: The Life of America's Experimental Poet ." The American Poetry Web. 22 Apr 2007
<http://titan.iwu.edu/~wchapman/americanpoetryweb/eecbio.html>.
"ee cummings quotes." Brainy Quote. 22 Apr 2007
<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/e_e_cummings.html>.
Cummings, Edward Estlin. Collected Poems. Harcourt, Brace and company: 1938
Bengtsson, Gunnar. "Biography of ee cummings." AmericanPoems.com. 22 April 2007. 22 Apr 2007
<http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings>.
Burt Franklin& Co.. E.E. Cummings The Critical Reception. New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1981.
Untermeyer, Louis. Modern American Poetry, Modern British Poetry: A Critical Anthology. Harcourt, 1942.
Perceptions,Inc.. 22 Apr 2007 <http://perceptions-inc.com/recognition.html>.
Hutchinson, Tom. "biographical timeline." ee cummings. 22 Apr 2007
<http://www.geocities.com/soho/8454/eec.htm>.
Hulali. "The Anatomy of ee cummings." Old Poetry . 19 August 2006. 22 Apr 2007
<http://oldpoetry.com/column/show/28>.
Caryn. "e.e. cummings." Literary Kicks. 21 February 2003. 22 Apr 2007
<http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/msg.jsp?what=EECummings>.
Benzel, Michael. "E.E. Cummings." Modern American Poetry. 22 Apr 2007
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings.htm>.
"Cummings, E. E.: Copyright Page." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec Project
Editor. Vol. 137. Thomson Gale, 2003. eNotes.com. 2006. 22 Apr, 2007
<http://lit.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/
cummings-e-e/copyright-page>