e. e. cummings

e. e. cummings (1894-1962), American poet, who was one of the most radically experimental and inventive writers of the 20th century.

cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard University. During World War I he was an ambulance driver in France, ultimately spending three months in a French military detention camp on a false charge. The experience served as the basis for the autobiographical prose work The Enormous Room (1922). After World War I he studied art in Paris. His first volume of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys, appeared in 1923. During the 1920s and 1930s he lived alternately in France and the United States, finally settling in New York.

His works include XLI Poems (1925); him, a play in verse and prose (1927); CIOPW (1931), a collection of drawings and paintings taking its title from the initial letters of the materials used—charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, and watercolour; Eimi (1933), a travel diary of his trip to the Soviet Union; Collected Poems (1938); i: six nonlectures (1953); Poems, 1923-1954 (1954); and 95 Poems (1958).

cummings's style is characterized by typographical nonconformity (including that of his own name: e e cummings), distortions of syntax, unusual punctuation, new words, and a liberal use of jazz rhythms and slang. Although the emotional content of his poetry appears at first glance to be cynical, it is basically lyrical and almost romantic.