Edwards Estlin (e.e.) Cummings (1894-1962) wrote 2,900 poems in his lifetime.
He was the recipient of numerous honors including two Guggenheim Fellowships and an honorary Harvard professorship and was one of the most well known, popular and influential poets of his time.
While Cummings wrote many conventional sonnets, he is best known for his free verse in which rhyme, meter and conventional punctuation were discarded in favor of an idiosyncratic syntax and idiomatic expressions of his own devise. Cummings was was also a painter and his typographical style reveals his interest in visual presentation.
His unorthodox style was present from childhood as evidenced by this letter to his father, written at the age of six.
"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"
i thank You God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most
this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive
again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting
touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears
awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
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
children
guessed(but only a few
and down
they forgot as up they grew
autumn
winter spring summer)
that
noone loved him more by more
when by
now and tree by leaf
she
laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by
snow and stir by still
anyone’s
any was all to her
someones
married their everyones
laughed
their cryings and did their dance
(sleep
wake hope and then)they
said
their nevers they slept their dream
stars
rain sun moon
(and only
the snow can begin to explain
how
children are apt to forget to remember
with up
so floating many bells down)
one day
anyone died i guess
(and
noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk
buried them side by side
little by
little and was by was
all by
all and deep by deep
and more
by more they dream their sleep
noone and
anyone earth by april
wish by
spirit and if by yes.
Women and
men(both dong and ding)
summer
autumn winter spring
reaped
their sowing and went their came
sun moon
stars rain
somewhere i have never travelled,
somewhere
i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any
experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your
most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which
i cannot touch because they are too near
your
slightest look easily will unclose me
though i
have closed myself as fingers,
you open
always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching
skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if
your wish be to close me,i and
my life
will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when
the heart of this flower imagines
the snow
carefully everywhere descending;
nothing
which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power
of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels
me with the colour of its countries,
rendering
death and forever with each breathing
(i do not
know what it is about you that closes
and
opens;only something in me understands
the voice
of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not
even the rain, has such small hands.
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