Edward Estlin Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings was an American poet, who was one of the most radically experimental and inventive writers of the 20th century. Some distinctive feature of Cummings's poetry is the abandonment of uppercase letters and his use of grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. He had his own unique style of writing unlike any other writer in history.

E. E. Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894. Early in his life, Cummings parents, Edward and Rebecca Clarke Cummings, encouraged him to develop his creative writing skills. In 1911, Cummings entered Harvard College, where his father was a teacher, specializing in Greek and other languages. In 1916 Cummings receives MA from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. After Harvard, Cummings moved to New York City to work for a mail-order publishing company. In 1917 Cummings volunteered to serve in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance group in France. During Cummings’ service, he met William Slater Brown, who becomes his life long friend. They are both assigned to ambulance duty on Noyon sector. Later Brown’s letters home aroused suspicions in the French army censor. On September 21, 1917, Brown was arrested along with Cummings, who refused to separate himself

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Silver, used in conjunction with watersmooth, that described the stallion, Dilworth stated, could also refer to the "silver-haired Bill Cody in old age"(175).

“Buffalo Bill's

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death”

His line breaks and technique of separating words is a precise and deliberate method which causes the reader to think. In 1961, Cummings took a trip to Italy, Greece, and France. Style throughout Cummings work is usually difficult to piece together and the works' meanings are even harder to decipher, but they all conjure the reader to think. This word implies destruction of what has just taken place, the birth of a baby(90). Cummings, throughout this poem, uses space in order to indicate pauses, much as a comma would do. "He has a richly sensuous mind; his verse is distinguished by fluidity and weight; he is equipped to range lustily and long among the major passions"(140) Through examples of his work, "from spiralling ecstatically this," Buffalo Bill's," "next to of course god america I," and "whippoorwill this," it can be shown that Cummings is a deliberate, inventive, and precise poet who uses his own, unique style. " "Pigeonsjustlikethat" are the clay pigeons that Cody destroyed while perfecting his shooting. He has been admired for decades for his style of writing and the thoughts he provokes. Cummings creates the word "unmiracle". Cummings also uses the combined words "onetwothreefourfive" and "pigeonsjustlikethat. Alfred Kazin says that the poet's style is "arrogant" and "slap stick" and that Cummings is "the duality of the traditionalist and the clown"(155). After the First World War was over, Cummings went to Paris to study art.

Approximate Word count = 1098
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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