E. E. Cummings: Poems E. E. Cummings

Poetry

As well as being influenced by notable modernists, including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, Cummings was particularly drawn to early imagist experiments; later, his visits to Paris exposed him to Dada and Surrealism, which was reflected in his writing style.[38] Cummings critic and biographer Norman Friedman remarks that in Cummings' later work the "shift from simile to symbol" created poetry that is "frequently more lucid, more moving, and more profound than his earlier".[39]

Despite Cummings' familiarity with avant-garde styles (likely affected by the calligrammes of French poet Apollinaire, according to a contemporary observation[40]), much of his work is quite traditional. For example, many of his poems are sonnets, albeit described by Richard D. Cureton as "revisionary ... with scrambled rhymes and rearranged, disproportioned structures; awkwardly unpredictable metrical variation; clashing, mawkish diction; complex, wandering syntax; etc."[41] He occasionally drew from the blues form and used acrostics. Many of Cummings' poems are satirical and address social issues[d] but have an equal or even stronger bias toward Romanticism: time and again his poems celebrate love, sex, and the season of rebirth.[42][e]

While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with the Romantic tradition, critic Emily Essert asserts that Cummings' work is particularly modernist and frequently employs what linguist Irene Fairley calls "syntatic deviance".[43][44] Some poems do not involve any typographical or punctuation innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.

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 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)

From "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in" (1952)[f]

While some of his poetry is free verse (and not beheld to rhyme or meter), Cureton has remarked that many of his sonnets follow an intricate rhyme scheme, and often employ pararhyme.[41] A number of Cummings' poems feature his typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page, wherein Essert asserts "feeling is first" and the work begs to "be re-read in order to be understood";[43] Cummings, also a painter, created his texts not just as literature, but as "visual objects" on the page, and used typography to "paint a picture".[9][45]

The seeds of Cummings' unconventional style appear well established even in his earliest work. At age six, he wrote to his father:[46]

FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD, HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN, FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR, LOVE, YOU DEAR, ESTLIN.

Following his autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, Cummings' first published work was a collection of poems titled Tulips and Chimneys (1923). This early work already displayed Cummings' characteristically eccentric use of grammar and punctuation, although a fair amount of the poems are written in conventional language.[9]

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did Women and men (both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain

From "anyone lived in a pretty how town" (1940)[g]

Cummings' works often do not follow the conventional rules that generate typical English sentences, or what Fairley identifies as "ungrammar".[44] In addition, a number of Cummings' poems feature, in part or in whole, intentional misspellings, and several incorporate phonetic spellings intended to represent particular dialects.[48] Cummings also employs what Fairley describes as "morphological innovation", wherein he frequently creates what critic Ian Landles calls: "unusual compounds suggestive of 'a child's language'" like "'mud-luscious' and 'puddle-wonderful'".[44][49] Literary critic R.P. Blackmur has commented that this use of language is "frequently unintelligible because [Cummings] disregards the historical accumulation of meaning in words in favor of merely private and personal associations".[50]

Fellow poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, in her equivocal letter recommending Cummings for the Guggenheim Fellowship he was awarded in 1934, expressed her frustration at his opaque symbolism. "[I]f he prints and offers for sale poetry which he is quite content should be, after hours of sweating concentration, inexplicable from any point of view to a person as intelligent as myself, then he does so with a motive which is frivolous from the point of view of art, and should not be helped or encouraged by any serious person or group of persons ... there is fine writing and powerful writing (as well as some of the most pompous nonsense I ever let slip to the floor with a wide yawn) ... What I propose, then, is this: that you give Mr. Cummings enough rope. He may hang himself; or he may lasso a unicorn."[51]

Cummings also wrote children's books and novels. A notable example of his versatility is an introduction he wrote for a collection of the comic strip Krazy Kat.[52]

Cummings included ethnic slurs in his writing, which proved controversial. In his 1950 collection Xaipe: Seventy-One Poems, Cummings published two poems containing words that caused outrage in some quarters. Friedman considered these two poems to be "condensed" and "cryptic" parables, "sparsely told", in which setting the use of such "inflammatory material" was likely to meet with reader misapprehension. Poet William Carlos Williams spoke out in his defense.[53][54][55]

Cummings biographer Catherine Reef notes of the controversy:[53]

Friends begged Cummings to reconsider publishing these poems, and the book's editor pleaded with him to withdraw them, but he insisted that they stay. All the fuss perplexed him. The poems were commenting on prejudice, he pointed out, and not condoning it. He intended to show how derogatory words cause people to see others in terms of stereotypes rather than as individuals. "America (which turns Hungarian into 'hunky' & Irishman into 'mick' and Norwegian into 'square-head') is to blame for 'kike,'" he said.

Plays

During his lifetime, Cummings published four plays. HIM, a three-act play, was first produced in 1928 by the Provincetown Players in New York City. The production was directed by James Light. The play's main characters are "Him", a playwright, portrayed by William Johnstone, and "Me", his girlfriend, portrayed by Erin O'Brien-Moore.

Cummings said of the unorthodox play:[56]

Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it is all 'about'—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this play isn't 'about,' it simply is. ... Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU."

Anthropos, or the Future of Art is a short, one-act play that Cummings contributed to the anthology Whither, Whither or After Sex, What? A Symposium to End Symposium. The play consists of dialogue between Man, the main character, and three "infrahumans", or inferior beings. The word anthropos is the Greek word for "man", in the sense of "mankind".

Tom, A Ballet is a ballet based on Uncle Tom's Cabin. The ballet is detailed in a "synopsis" as well as descriptions of four "episodes", which were published by Cummings in 1935. It remained unperformed until 2015.[57]

Santa Claus: A Morality was probably Cummings' most successful play. It is an allegorical Christmas fantasy presented in one act of five scenes. The play was inspired by his daughter Nancy, with whom he was reunited in 1946. It was first published in the Harvard College magazine, Wake. The play's main characters are Santa Claus, his family (Woman and Child), Death, and Mob. At the outset of the play, Santa Claus's family has disintegrated due to their lust for knowledge (Science). After a series of events, however, Santa Claus's faith in love and his rejection of the materialism and disappointment he associates with Science are reaffirmed, and he is reunited with Woman and Child.

Art

Cummings was an avid painter, referring to writing and painting as his twin obsessions[58] and to himself as a poetandpainter.[59] He painted continuously, relentlessly, from childhood until his death, and left in his estate more than 1600 oils and watercolors (a figure that does not include the works he sold during his career) and over 9,000 drawings.[59] In a self-interview from Foreword to an Exhibit: II (1945), the artist asked himself, Tell me, doesn’t your painting interfere with your writing? and answered, Quite the contrary: they love each other dearly.[60]

Cummings had more than 30 exhibits of his paintings in his lifetime.[59] He received substantial acclaim as an American cubist and an abstract, avant garde painter between the World Wars, but with the publication of his books The Enormous Room and Tulips and Chimneys in the 1920s, his reputation as a poet eclipsed his success as a visual artist.[59] In 1931, he published a limited edition volume of his artwork entitled CIOPW, named for his media of charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, and watercolor. About this same time, he began to break from Modernist aesthetics and employ a more subjective and spontaneous style;[59] his work became more representational: landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and portraits.[61]

Name and capitalization

Cummings' publishers and others have often echoed the unconventional orthography in his poetry by writing his name in lower case.[62] Cummings himself used both the lowercase and capitalized versions, though he most often signed his name with capitals.[62]

The use of lower case for his initials was popularized in part by the title of some books, particularly in the 1960s, printing his name in lower case on the cover and spine. In the preface to E. E. Cummings: The Growth of a Writer by Norman Friedman, critic Harry T. Moore notes Cummings "had his name put legally into lower case, and in his later books the titles and his name were always in lower case".[25] According to Cummings' widow, however, this is incorrect.[62] She wrote to Friedman: "You should not have allowed H. Moore to make such a stupid & childish statement about Cummings & his signature." On February 27, 1951, Cummings wrote to his French translator D. Jon Grossman that he preferred the use of upper case for the particular edition they were working on.[63] One Cummings scholar believes that on the rare occasions that Cummings signed his name in all lower case, he may have intended it as a gesture of humility, not as an indication that it was the preferred orthography for others to use.[62] Additionally, The Chicago Manual of Style, which prescribes favoring non-standard capitalization of names in accordance with the bearer's strongly stated preference, notes "E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name."[64]