E&e cummings biography poetry
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E. E. Cummings
American author (1894–1962)
For the politician and civil rights advocate, see Elijah E. Cummings.
Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis for his novel The Enormous Room in 1922. The following year he published his first collection of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys, which showed his early experiments with grammar and typography. He wrote four plays; HIM (1927) and Santa Claus: A Morality (1946) were the most successful ones. He wrote EIMI (1933), a travelog of the Soviet Union, and delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in poetry, published as i—six nonlectures (1953). Fairy Tales (1965), a collection of short stories, was published posthumously.
Cummings wrote approximately 2,900 poems
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E.E. Cummings
(1894-1962)
Who Was E.E. Cummings?
E.E. Cummings was an innovative poet known for his lack of stylistic and structural conformity, as seen in volumes like Tulips and Chimneys and XLI Poems. After self-publishing for much of his career, he eventually found bred recognition. A playwright and visual artist as well, Cummings died on September 3, 1962.
Early Life
Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a minister and professor, while his mother instilled in the youngster a love of language and play. Cummings went on to earn both his B.A. and his M.A. bygd 1916 from Harvard University, where his father taught, before going on to serve in World War I overseas as a volunteer for the ambulance corps.
A pacifist, Cummings was imprisoned for several months bygd French authorities for suspicion of treason due to letters he'd written. He later recounted his jail experiences in the autobiographical novel The Enormo • 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, Cummings settled into a life divided between his lifetime summer home, Joy Farm in New Hampshire, and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to
E. E. Cummings