i thank You God for this most amazing e.e.cummings

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"

Below are three Cummings poems read by the author, followed by the text

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

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.