E.E. Cummings was one of the most innovative poets in American literature. He is especially known for violating the rules of composition, rejecting punctuation, and capitalization (Costello 1). Cummings wrote prolifically: nearly 800 poems, plays, ballets, fairy tales, and autobiographies (Smelstor 2). Mr. Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the first born of twochildren, his parents were Edward Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke (Smelstor 2). In 1899, his family bought Joy Farm, an idyllic retreat the White Mountains. This is where Cummings would spend most of his summers. The pastoral surroundings and good country neighbors instilled in him a love of nature, simple pleasures, and humble, decent folk (Bloom 12). These things became common themes of his poetry (Bloom 12). Cummings enrolled in Harvard in 1911, and focused his studies on classics and literature, graduating magna cum laude four years later and staying on an extra year to earn his masters in English (Bloom 12). By 1915, he had earned a M.A. in English and classical studies (Aliprandini 1). After graduation Cummings moved to New York and obtained his first and only job as a clerk for a mail-order bookseller. Three months later he quit and went to work full-time on his poetry and paintings (Bloom 13). The following year he sailed for France as a volunteer in the Morton Harjes Ambulance Corps of the American Red Cross (Smelstor 2). Incarcerated in France during the First World War for subordination by the American army, he was skeptical of Uncle Sam, but, after being spied on during a trip to Russia in the '30s, he berated the Communist project that captivated many of his artist friends (Doherty 61). In Normandy, the... ... middle of paper ... ...crippled by arthritis and wore a brace that forced him to conduct these readings while sitting in a straight backed kitchen chair (Smelstor 2). His family divided their time between New York and his family farm in New Hampshire until his death from a stroke (Aliprandini 2). Cummings was an amazing writer and he is well know for it. He had very different techniques of his writing. His poems for example, had more than just writing. They had personality and individuality. Works Cited Aliprandini, Michael E.E. Cummings. New York: Great Neck Publishing, 2005. Bloom, Harold. Biography of E.E. Cummings. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2003. "Cummings, E.E." World Book Online InfoFinder. World Book, 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Doherty, Mike. E.E. Cummings: A Life. Toronto: Rogers Publishing, 2004. Print. Smelstor, Marjorie, ed. E.E. Cummings. New York: Salem Press, 2006.
Throughout history there have been many poets and some have succeeded while others didn’t have the same luck. But in history e.e. Cummings has stunned people with his creativity and exposure to the real world and not living in the fantasy people imagine they live in. Cummings was a great poet, and was able to make his own way of writing while he was also involved greatly in the modernist movement. But he demonstrates all his uniqueness in all and every poem, delivering people with knowledge and making them see the world with different eyes as in the poem “Since feeling is first”. Biography Born on October 14, 1894, E. E. Cummings an American poet was born at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers to date. His thrill filled tales of darkness and death helped people see a different side of romantic literature. Many believe that his isolated life and drinking problem helped influence his works. Poe showed his most prominent life accomplishment and disappointments through his life in his stories. He defined a lot of his life’s parallels through his works.
He has the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane, he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Claypool 3). In Washington in 1921 he took care of his grandparents and wrote full time....
Baldwin was a well-defined writer. “In his essays, he constantly depicted and expanded upon personal experiences” (Magill 104). Baldwin's ability to write with such passion and drama is what makes him truly gifted. “In his fiction he drew on autobiographical events, issues, and characters, building dramatic situations that closely reflected his intimate experience of the world” (Magill 104). Baldwin’s talent of choosing words carefully and connecting images with emotions helped him achieve maximum effect in his work (Magill 104).
The Poet is about a search for a serial killer that the FBI names “The Poet” due to this person’s signature of forcing the victims to write suicide notes in the form of a quote from Edgar Allen Poe. Jack McEvoy, a newspaper reporter from Denver, is the brother of a victim who was killed by the Poet. In an attempt to avenge his brother’s death McEvoy, and the FBI, form a nation-wide manhunt in search of this cunning illusive killer.
cummings, e. e. "since feeling is first." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson et al. 5th ed., shorter. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
One example from the text that shows Cummings have the incredible heroic trait of humility is found on page 120 of the Good Soldiers. In lines 150-152, Cummings says,”man ,I haven’t felt this good since i got to this hellhole”.
Shynn Felarca Mrs. Cox English Honors-Period 5 Due Date: 20 November 2015 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson A while back there were many poems and poets. Like Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, a romantic poet who put many deep meanings behind her poems, even if her poems were all mostly about death. When she was alive she was an unknown poet, but throughout the years she became well known.
Is the of style e. e. cummings' poetry its true genius, or the very reason the works should be called drivel? Alfred Kazin says that the poet's style is "arrogant" and "slap stick" and that cummings is "the duality of the traditionalist and the clown"(155). Others, such as Richard P. Blackmur, say his technique is an insult to the writing profession. He says that cummings' poetry would only appeal to those with a "childish spirit"(140). It was Mark Van Doren, though, who probably said the truth about cummings. "He has a richly sensuous mind; his verse is distinguished by fluidity and weight; he is equipped to range lustily and long among the major passions"(140) Through examples of his work, "from spiralling ecstatically this," Buffalo Bill's," "next to of course god america I," and "whippoorwill this," it can be show that cummings is a deliberate, inventive, and precise poet who uses his own, unique style.
A gradual dream-like state is suggested to the poem’s audience by cummings’s “far and wee” refrain, which is given increasing white space and therefore longer pauses, until each word of the refrain supports its own line. Initially the refrain complements the speaker’s excited springtime revelry; in fact, line five flows nicely...
“pity this busy monster, manunkind” it must be analyzed with Cummings’s life and what was going in the world at the time it was written in mind.
Rotella, Guy. "Nature, Time, and Transcendence in Cummings’ Later poems." Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings G.K. Hall & Co., 1984. 283-302.
Throughout this poem Cummings gets across several points. He is able to illustrate the conflict between old age and youth, yet also show how they come together. His specific writing style gets the credit for this. In only a few short stanzas he is able to write about the irony of the cycle of life that really makes the reader thing. At a second read of the poem the reader is able to pick up indirect points. Then after analyzing, the reader understands that all the small points can be joined together to perfectly describe the gap between the elderly and the younger generation.
Throughout his poetry, E. E. Cummings seduces readers deep into a thicket of scrambled words, missing punctuation, and unconventional structure. Within Cummings's poetic bramble, ambiguity leads the reader through what seems at first a confusing and winding maze. However, this confusion actually transforms into a path that leads the reader to the center of the thicket where Cummings's message lies: one should never allow one's experience to be limited by reason and rationality. In order to communicate his belief that emotional experience should triumph over reason, Cummings employs odd juxtapositions, outlandish metaphors, and inversions of traditional grammatical structures that reveal the "illogic" of reason. By breaking down the formal boundaries of his poetic structures, Cummings urges his readers to question boundaries of any kind. Indeed, in the same manner Cummings's literary style appears to be uncontrolled; many of his poems, such as "since feeling is first" and "as freedom is a breakfastfood," in turn suggest that emotion provides the compositional fabric for our experience of life, and therefore, emotion itself should never be defined or controlled.
I can now see why. E.E. Cummings work greatly influenced the transcendentalist movement and changed the way poets approached language and particularly punctuation. Many people may not think his work was great at the time but decades later he became one of the best poets of the 20th century.