by Ashley Olson

Created on: June 24, 2009

Edward Estlin Cummings is one of the most beloved, yet controversial American poets to date. His inspirations and talents for poetry, among other arts began being nurtured from a very early age. Blatantly obvious grammatical errors, and bold topic choices are two of the reasons why Cummings is so adored, but are also the source of many of the controversies surrounding his work. At Cummings' time of death he was one of the most widely read poets

Cummings was born to Edward and Rebecca Cummings on October 14th, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Bloom, 2003). When he was five years old he and his family moved to Silver Lake, New Hampshire where they purchased Joy Farm. Cummings spent much of his childhood, and nearly every summer of his life at Joy Farm, where he gathered much of his inspirations for his work. In 1911 Cummings enrolled in Harvard University where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1915. One year later, in 1916 Cummings obtained his Master's degree.

Cummings was first published in 1912 with a poem in an issue of The Harvard Monthly. At this time Cummings was noted as conventional in style and contents (Bloom, 2003). Five years later, his work surfaced again, this time in Eight Harvard Poets. Cummings' piece was noted for his typographical arrangement and selective punctuation. This was also the first time his practice of using lower case lettering for proper pronouns surfaced (Bloom, 2003). Although noted for his unusual writing strategy, Cummings began gaining popularity because of his inerest in topics such as war, and sex, as well as the simplicity of his writing (Poets.org).

Cummings often used experiences from his own life as inspiration for his writing. In 1917 Cummings volunteered for the North-Harjes Ambulance Corps, which in turn would inspire one of his most famous pieces, The Enormous Room (1922). The Enormous Room is a piece written based on Cummings experiences while in a detention camp after defending his friend, and refusing to say he hated the Germans during the French war. The Enormous Room is one of the most famous pieces of war literature written by an American to date (Bloom, 2003).

After returning from war Cummings settled into Greenwich Village in New York, where he submersed himself into his artistic endeavors (washingtonpost.com, 2004). Cummings was not only a brilliant poet, but also dabbled in playwriting, and was also a skilled painter. In 1927 Cummings

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>