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-...
“-Before leaving my roomi turn, and (stoopingthrough the morning) kissthis pillow, dearwhere our heads lived and were.”
“Meanwhile myself et cetera lay quietly in the deep mud etcetera (dreaming,et cetera, ofyour smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera.)”
“Let’s live suddenly without thinking.Let’s live like the light that kills.And let’s as silence,because Whirl’s after all:(after me) love, and after you.I occasionally feel vague howvague I don’t know tenuous Now - spears and The Then - arrows making doour mouths, something red, something tall.”
“So truly perfectly the skiesby merciful love whispered were,completes its brightness with your eyesany illimitable star.”
“When to me youleap and I’m born we‘re sunlight ofoneness.”
“Really unreal world, will you perhaps dothe breathing for me while I am away?”
“The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion”
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”
“let's start a magazine to hell with literature we want something redbloodedlousy with pure reeking with stark and fearlessly obscenebut really clean get what I mean let’s not spoil it let’s make it serioussomething authentic and delirious you know something genuine like a mark in a toiletgraced with guts and gutted with grace”
“the other guineahendied of a broken heart and we came to New York.I used to sit at a table,drawing wingswith a pencil that kept breaking and i keptremembering how your mind looked when it sleptfor several years,to wake up asking why.So then you turned into a photographof somebody who’s trying not to laughat somebody who’s trying not to cry”
“Me up at doesout of the floorquietly Starea poisoned mousestill who aliveis asking Whathave i done thatYou wouldn’t have”
“...sunlight is(life and day are)only loaned:whereasnight is given(night and death and the rainare given;and given is how beautifully snow)”
“Damn everything but the circus! ...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy. That won't throw it's heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence...”
“a connotation of infinitysharpens the temporal splendor of this nightwhen souls which have forgot frivolityin lowliness,noting the fatal flightof worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dreamdown eager avenues of lifelessnessconsider for how much themselves shall gleam,in the poised radiance of perpetualness.When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thoughtis like a woman amorous to be known;and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,feels the tremendous yonder for his own—on such a night the sea through her blind milesof crumbling silence seriously smiles”
“the hillslike poets put onpurple thought againstthe magnificent clamor ofdaytorturedin gold”
“You are my sun,my moon, andall my stars.”
“Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.”
“in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious the littlelame balloonmanwhistles far and weeand eddieandbill comerunning from marbles andpiracies and it'sspringwhen the world is puddle-wonderfulthe queerold balloonman whistlesfar and weeand bettyandisbel come dancingfrom hop-scotch and jump-rope andit'sspringand the goat-footedballoonMan whistlesfarandwee”
“a politician is an arse uponwhich everyone has sat except a man”
“...A good Book, has no Ending...”
“(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) Edward Estlin Cummings”
“i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows”
“i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)”
“if i or anybody don't know where it her his my next meal's coming from i say to hell with that that doesn't matter (and if he she it or everybody gets a bellyful without lifting my finger i say to hell with that i say that doesn't matter) but if somebody or you are beautiful or deep or generous what i say is whistle that sing that yell that spell that out big (bigger than cosmic rays w ar earthquakes famine or the ex prince of whoses diving into a whatses to rescue miss nobody's probably handbag) because i say that's not swell (get me) babe not (understand me) lousy kid that's something else my sweet (i feel that's true)”
“I will take the sun in my mouthand leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyesto dash against darkness”
“May picked up a smooth round stone,As small as a world and as large as alone.”
“As small as a world as large as alone.”
“floatfloafloflflloloatatoatloatf loat fl oatf loatl ngLy&frisklispinglyT w irlEric,”
“o pr gress verily thou art m mentous superc lossal hyperpr digious etc i kn w”
“maybe godis a child‘s hand)very carefullybring-ingto you and tome(and quite without crushing)thepapery weightless diminutiveworldwith a hole init outof which demons with wings would be streaming ifsomething had(maybe they couldn’tagree)not happened(and floating-ly into”
“(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands”
“You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.”
“the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople... you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”
“because it'sSpringthingSdare to do people(& notthe other wayround)because it's AprilLives lead their ownpersons(insteadof everybodyelse's)butwhat's whollymarvellous myDarlingis that you &i are more than you& i(because It's we)”
“Nobody loses all the time.”
“supposeLife is an old man carrying flowers on his head.”
“...and down they forgot as up they grew.”
“Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.”
“I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.”
“we're anything brighter than even the sun”
“what time is it?its is by every stara different time,and each most falsely true ...”
“Who can tell truth from falsehood any more?I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:no man or woman on this big small earth.How should our sages miss the mark of life,and our most skillful players lose the game?your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me:because all know, and no one understands.”
“It takes three to make a child.”
“O sweet spontaneous earth”
“I love you much most beautiful darling more than anyone on the earth and I like you better than everything in the sky.”
“You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and— Just tired. So am I.”
“You are tired,(I think)Of the always puzzle of living and doing;And so am I.Come with me, then,And we’ll leave it far and far away—(Only you and I, understand!)You have played,(I think)And broke the toys you were fondest of,And are a little tired now;Tired of things that break, and—Just tired.So am I.But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—Open to me!For I will show you the places Nobody knows,And, if you like,The perfect places of Sleep.Ah, come with me!I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,That floats forever and a day;I’ll sing you the jacinth songOf the probable stars;I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,Until I find the Only Flower,Which shall keep (I think) your little heartWhile the moon comes out of the sea.”
“guilt is the cause of more maraudersthan history's most obscene disauders”
“I am an i poet.”
“in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems”