by jessie sidhu and liz abramov e.e. cummings. most known as e.e. cummings edward estlin cummings ...

by jessie sidhu and liz abramov

e.e. cummings

Most known as e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings 2900 poems 2 autobiographical

novels 4 plays

Artist as well 1962, second most

widely read poet in the USA (after Robert Frost)

Background Info

Carnbridge, MA 1894 Began writing- 1904 Harvard

1915- B.A. 1916- M.A.

Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound

1917- 1st Book Eight Harvard Poets

Biography

Named after his father, Edward Cummings

Father-Harvard Graduate Married three times 1932- Married Marion Morehouse

(model/actress) 30 yrs

Biography

5 months ambulance driver in World War II

Sent to French prison camp Novel: The Enormous Room

Traveled through Europe Pablo Picasso

Elizabethan Song, 18th Century Satire, Pindaric Ode

Buried in Boston, MA (1962)

Biography

Academy of American Poets Fellowship

Two Guggenheim Fellowships

Charles Eliot Norton Professorship (Harvard)

Bollinger Prize in Poetry (1958)

Ford Foundation Grant

Honors

Very unique style “Disordered syntax” + “typographical

disarrangements” “Arranged derangement”, integers of the word

curve of ‘e’, rhythm of ‘m’, astonishment of ‘o’

Word coinage kept already existing root words, joining to them new affixes

Poets Style

“Tmesis” his signature

Varied use of parentheses

“Visual stanza” not rhyme/ meter, but shape thought

Free verse

Visual appearance of most poems=based on interest in contemporary art forms

Poets Style

Strange use of space + punctuation marks Comma used where period is expected

Words were literary art If the printer messed up on a word- interfere

with his “arrangement”

Themes of poems Love + nature

Incorporated imagery about nature and death

Poets style

At early age, most critics thought of him as a potential lyric & satiric poet

Critics believed that his innovative verse techniques & his lyric/satiric talents successfully blended

Structure of poems connected to meaning of poems

Positive Criticism

Thought techniques were: Cheap and shallow not poetic

Style made critics upset, said it was; Unusual and thought style to call attention to itself rather

than to describe a theme

Objected explicit treatment of sexuality Believe style didn’t evolve throughout career

Structure drew readers’ attention from actual poem Many critics believed he didn’t develop much as a

writer through his career

Negative Criticism

e.e. cummings

“I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries… that ‘an artist, a man, a failure’ is… a naturally and miraculously whole human being… whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.”

Unique poet Original artist Incredible modernist poet of consequence