E.E. Cummings

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, day and night to make you like everybody else, is to fight the hardest battle any human can fight – but never stop fighting.

Profile / Biography

E.E. Cummings is probably best known for his contributions to poetry which made it a difficult subject for many and a means to an illegitimate career for some who use the excuse that their genius cannot be understood.

Edward Estlin Cummings was born in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  In addition to working poetry, Cummings was also a novelist, painter, and a children’s writer.  His innovative poetry was eccentric in its construct, and often did not conform to conversational or written English in a way that could be understood by casual readers, due to its strange syntax and unconventional punctuation.

Cumming was educated at Harvard, and received an honorary doctorate in 1952.

Cumming’s poetry extended beyond his non-traditional style to standard sonnets and he would also write in acrostics and blues form.  By the time of his death in 1962, Cummings had published over 900 poems, which he began to write at the age of six.  He is considered one of the preeminent voices in American 20th century poetry.  His first published work was The Enormous Room, published in 1922.

Cummings is best understood after one immerses themselves in poetical learning for a period and under the tutelage of an expert.