Edward Estlin Cummings Essay

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, mum to academic parents who early on encouraged him to develop his creative gifts (Everett). His was a happy childhood he grew up in a spacious, merry house, his neighborhood was full of children who roamed the nearby woods and played baseball during summer or skated on a local pond in the winter (Berry, 8). When he grew up, he acknowledged the impact his parents had on him, stating that it had been my joyous fatality and supreme good fortune to belong to such family (Berry, 8).According to Reef, Estlin erst said I did not decide to become a poet I was always writing poetry (5). He did not originally blend in writing in the form for which he is best known today. When he was young, he wrote poetry and produced pencil drawings. His love of language was encouraged by his m other, who made up word games to encourage his creativity (Blanchard and Falcetti, 58). At the equivalent time, his poetry is filled with descr iptions and images of nature, inborn elements, and natural processes (Parekh). He took his fathers pastoral background and used it to preach in many of his other poems (Eich).Estlin graduated from Harvard for his BA and MA studies. His travels took him to different places around the human race. When war stone-broke out bet don US and Germany in 1917, Estlin joined a sanguine Cross unit in France as an ambulance driver (Reef, 29). There, he and a friend were imprisoned on suspicion of espionage (www. poets. org). This experience resulted in his novel, The grand Room. He also traveled throughout Europe, where he met poets and artists including Pablo Picasso. He divide his life between Paris and Greenwich Village, and later between the Village and his impertinently Hamsphire utmostm (Schmidt, 85).He became widely known as a unmatched and experimental poet (www. who2. com) whose radical use of form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structu res created a unused, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression (www. poets. org). In addition, the landscape of recent England with its animals, fields and forests influenced his poetry and infused it with images from the natural world (Shuman, 318). As Shuman succinctly occlusive out His poetry combines a childs enthusiasm for the wonders of the natural world with a sophisticated adults wariness of ex officio positions and conventional thinking (311).One such poem is the wonderful in just- . The poem quite simply is about the beginning of a new season in just-/ recoil. In this poem, Estlin coins words, alters punctuations and invents his own typography. Thus, the poem itself represents creativity and how it spring from the earth (Phelan). The poem then continues on to paint a photographic film of Spring and embodies the themes of innocence and childhood. This poem in particular embodies his view, where Estlin himself explains In so far as a human being is an artist, s kies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are inestimable and art is every mystery of nature (314-15).in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come ravel from marbles and piracies and its spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and its spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee e. e. cummings WORKS CITED Berry, S. L. E. E. Cummings. Indiana The Creative Company, 1994. Blanchard, Mary Loving, and Cara Falcetti. Poets for Young Adults. spick-and-span York Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. Cummings, E. E. 100 Selected Poems. Atlanta Grove Press, 1994. Cummings, E. E. Commentary on carriage and Art by E. E. Cummings. New York October House, 1965. E. E. Cummings. Academy of American Poets. 12 dec 2008. E. E. Cummings. A Who2 Profile. 12 downslope 28. http//who2. com/ask/eecummings. html Eich, Marty. E. E. Cummings Biography. 12 Dec 2008. Everett, Nicholas. E. E. Cummings Life. March 2001. Modern American Poetry.Dec 2008. http//www. english. uiuc. edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings_life. htm Parekh, Pushpa N. genius in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings. Spring Volume 3 1994 63-71. Phelan, Julie. Poetry digest in Just- by E. E. Cummings. 12 Dec 2008. Reef, Catherine. E. E. Cummings A Poets Life. New York Clarion Books, 2006. Schmidt, Michael. The Great Modern Poets. London Quercus, 2006. Shuman, Robert Baird Great American Writers. New York Marshall Cavendish, 2002.