E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
“and kisses are a better fate than wisdom”
“10maggie and millie and molly and maywent down to the beach (to play one day)and maggie discovered a shell that sangso sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, andmillie befriended a stranded starwhose rays five languid fingers wereand molly was chased by a horrible thingwhich raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and may came home with a smooth round stoneas small as a world & as large as aloneFor whatever we lose (like a you or a me)it's always ourselves we find in the sea”
“Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar deterioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying.you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough.”
“An intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effects”
“Spring is like a perhaps handSpring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people starearranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)andchanging everything carefullyspring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)andwithout breaking anything.”
“there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singingbut more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness”
“sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love(all the merry little birds areflying in the floating in thevery spirits singing inare winging in the blossoming)lovers go and lovers comeawandering awonderingbut any two are perfectlyalone there's nobody else alive(such a sky and such a suni never knew and neither did youand everybody never breathedquite so many kinds of yes)not a tree can count his leaveseach herself by openingbut shining who by thousands meanonly one amazing thing(secretly adoring shylytiny winging darting floatingmerry in the blossomingalways joyful selves are singing)sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love”
“a salesman is an it that stinks to please but whether to please itself or someone else makes no more difference than if it sells hate condoms education snakeoil vac uumcleaners terror strawberries democ ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair”
“A world of madeis not a world of born”
“Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violetsdandelionsAnd the big bullying daisies through the field wonderfulwith eyes a little sorryAnother comes also picking flowers”
“who pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss you”
“a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being”
“maggie and milly and molly and may"maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach(to play one day)and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,andmilly befriended a stranded starwhose rays five languid fingers were;and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:andmay came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”
“And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms”
“as small as a world and as large as aloneFor whatever we lose(like a you or a me)it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”
“Be of love (a little)More carefulThan everything”
“it may not always be so; and i saythat if your lips, which i have loved, should touchanother's, and your dear strong fingers clutchhis heart, as mine in time not far away;if on another's face your sweet hair layin such a silence as i know,or suchgreat writhing words as, uttering overmuch,stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; if this should be, i say if this should be-you of my heart, send me a little word;that i may go unto him, and take his hands,saying, Accept all happiness from me.Then shall i turn my face,and hear one birdsing terribly afar in the lost lands.”
“it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”
“my mind isa big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal toolsin an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex-ecute strides of cobaltnevertheless ifeel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming something a little different, in factmyselfhereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings”
“We can never be born enough.”
“O to be in finland/ now that russia's here)”
“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.”
“time is a tree (this life one leaf)but love is the sky and i am for youjust so long and long enough”
“love is thicker than forgetmore thinner than recallmore seldom than a wave is wetmore frequent than to failit is most mad and moonlyand less it shall unbethan all the sea which onlyis deeper than the sealove is less always than to winless never than aliveless bigger than the least beginless littler than forgiveit is most sane and sunlyand more it cannot diethan all the sky which onlyis higher than the sky”
“Such was a poet and shall be and is-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand.”
“down with hell and heaven and all the religious fussinfinity pleased our parents one inch looks good to us”
“XVIILady, i will touch you with my mind.Touch you and touch and touchuntil you giveme suddenly a smile,shyly obscene(lady i willtouch you with my mind.)Touchyou,that is all,lightly and you utterly will becomewith infinite carethe poem which i do not write.”
“wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers.”
“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”
“By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison.”
“nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow, mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have:only to grow.Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
“anyone lived in a pretty how town(with up so floating many bells down)spring summer autumn winterhe sang his didn't he danced his didWomen and men(both little and small)cared for anyone not at allthey sowed their isn't they reaped their samesun moon stars rainchildren guessed(but only a fewand down they forgot as up they grewautumn winter spring summer)that noone loved him more by morewhen by now and tree by leafshe laughed his joy she cried his griefbird by snow and stir by stillanyone's any was all to hersomeones married their everyoneslaughed their cryings and did their dance(sleep wake hope and then)theysaid their nevers they slept their dreamstars rain sun moon(and only the snow can begin to explainhow children are apt to forget to rememberwith 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 sidelittle by little and was by wasall by all and deep by deepand more by more they dream their sleepnoone and anyone earth by aprilwish by spirit and if by yes.Women and men (both dong and ding)summer autumn winter springreaped their sowing and went their camesun moon stars rain”