How Does Cummings Courage To Grow Up And Become Who You Really Are Analysis

E.E. Cummings

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are (BrainyQuote).” Edward Estlin Cummings was an intelligent man who grows up, becomes himself, and writes poems that are still relevant today. Cummings love of writing can be seen throughout his life and is embodied in his collection of works. EE Cummings gives a voice for the lovers, the heartbroken, and for the people.

Edward Estlin Cummings’s story begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts October 14, 1894, the day he was born. Cummings has had many important influences in his life. EE Cummings earned his Bachelor's and Master's at Harvard University, where his father happened to be a professor at. After Cummings’s time at Harvard he went on to serve in WWI with the ambulance

corps. Even though Cummings was serving in the war, he believed that war and violence was unjustifiable, which happens to get him imprisoned in France for being suspected of treason from the letters he had written(Bio.com). Cummings writes about this experience in The Enormous Room, an autobiography. In it he writes “O gouvernment francais, I think it was not very clever of You to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; for when Governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back at the microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts. (Enormous Room Quotes by EE Cummings)” Even after being imprisoned there, in the future he returns a number of times, even meeting the Pablo Picasso on one occasion. Everything from his mother sharing with him the love of language and plays, to being in a jail overseas, ultimately made him the poet he was and is. This was just the beginning of his writing career. Cummings goes on to write many more poems, books, and even plays, which he earns many awards and honors for. Some he received do his works are the Dial Award (1925), the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1944), Fellowship of American Academy of Poets (1950), and just so many more (Wikipedia). Towards the end of Cummings life he becomes a very private person. The only times Cummings makes appearances in his later years are at Harvard to read some of his poems to student. Cummings had became partially crippled by arthritis and was restricted to having to sit in a straight backed chair while doing these poem readings to the students (enotes.com). After E. E. Cummings many years of writing he finds himself in North Conway, New Hampshire where on September 3, 1962 he dies.
During EE Cummings life he writes a number of poems. Cummings has a noticeably different writing style, he is not one to follow a specific spacing or setup. The only writing rules EE Cummings ever followed were his own. Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, Cummings wrote a poem a day, exploring many traditional poetic forms (Poetry Foundation). A quote from BrainyQuotes.com that quotes Cummings states “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” From this quote you can feel Cummings’s need to discover life, love, and the world. Considering all of this, EE Cummings takes all his feelings and emotions and puts them directly into his poems: life and death, love and heartbreak, and the good and evil of this world. All things he was daring enough to go out in the world and discover.
One of the poems Cummings writes is titled “If” and talks about what he would do if he would change different aspects of his life.

In this poem Cummings is expressing how even if he could change things, he wouldn’t because himself and his life wouldn’t be the same. He writes this pretty much for anyone willing to read it. One of the best things about this poem is that the reader can easily relate to the central meaning of contentment. “There might be some sense But I'd be in suspense For on Such a pretense you wouldn't be you (Hello Poetry)”, in this stanza, if you've read the whole poem, it really gives you a clear picture by explaining exactly how he wouldn't want anything to be different. If things were different the reader wouldn't be the reader, you wouldn't be you, and Cummings wouldn't be Cummings. If it wasn't for the series of events leading up to moments in his, your, and everyone's lives people couldn’t possibly have the same life they have today. Changing just one aspect of anyone's life could ultimately have a domino effect which ultimately could change everything about them. Therefore if anyone were to get anything from this poem, it should be that Cummings is trying to tell them that without all the series of events that have lead them to this second, you wouldn't be the same

you.
As a final point, Edward Cummings was a brilliant man who wrote amazing, diverse poems, and accomplished great things in his life. Between all his works and all his awards, Cummings spoke and influenced a number of people throughout his life. “If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making (BrainyQuote).”