e. e. cummings

• Poet – 2900 poems• Painter• Essayist• Author – 2 (autobiographical) novels• Playwright – 4 plays

Biography• Edward Estlin Cummings

• Born: October 14, 1894 Cambridge, Massachusetts• Died: September 3, 1962 (aged 67)

• Started writing poetry in his early youth

• He and his parents were very close

• Went to Harvard University, from 1911 to 1916

Biography• He liked traveling a lot

• He and a friend were imprisoned (on false grounds) for three months in a French detention camp.

• His father was killed in a car accident in 1926

1. Elaine Orr daughter Nancy2. Anne Minnerly Barton3. Marion Morehouse

• He died on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire of a stroke.

Bibliography• The Enormous Room (1922) Experiences in French camp• Tulips and Chimneys (1923) First published collection of poems• & (1925) (self-published)• XLI Poems (1925)• is 5 (1926)• HIM (1927) (a play)• ViVa (1931)• Eimi (1933) Travelling experiences• No Thanks (1935)• Collected Poems (1960)• 50 Poems (1940)• 1 × 1 (1944)• XAIPE: Seventy-One Poems (1950)• i—six nonlectures (1953) Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he gave on Harvard• Poems, 1923-1954 (1954)• 95 Poems (1958)• 73 Poems (1963) (posthumous)• Fairy Tales (1965) (posthumous)

Poetry• Unconventional style: syntax, punctuation, use of capital letters

• Many poems are satirical and address social issues

• Bias toward romanticism: themes as Love, Nature, Sex, Life and Death

• Often called idealistic and naïve

the sky wasthe sky was can dy lu minous edible spry pinks shylemons greens coo l choc olate s.

un der, a lo co mo tive s pout ing vi o lets

o sweet spontaneousO sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee

,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy

beauty .how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true

to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest

them only with spring)

love is the every only godlove is the every only god

who spoke this earth so glad and big even a thing all small and sad man,may his mighty briefness dig for love beginning means return seas who could sing so deep and strong

one queerying wave will whitely yeam from each last shore and home come young so truly perfectly the skies by merciful love whispered were, completes its brightness with your eyes

any illimitable star

i carry your heart with mei carry your heart with me (i carry it inmy heart) i am never without it (anywherei go you go, my dear; and whatever is doneby only me is your doing, my darling) i fearno fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i wantno world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meantand 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 budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which growshigher 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)

Awards• Dial Award (1925)• Guggenheim Fellowship (1933)• Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1944)• Harriet Monroe Prize from Poetry magazine (1950)• Fellowship of American Academy of Poets (1950)• Guggenheim Fellowship (1951)• Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard (1952–1953)• Special citation from the National Book Award Committee

for his Poems, 1923-1954 (1957)• Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1958)• Boston Arts Festival Award (1957)• Two-year Ford Foundation grant of $15,000 (1959)