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