e.e cummings

Elenor Ladd-Cawthorne
American Literature
Ms. Britt
April 14, 2004

e.e. cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings)
1849-1962
“A draftsman of words”- e.e. cummings

► Cummings was born in Cambridge, Mass. to a father who was a Harvard professor and a Congregationalist minister

► Cummings was educated at Harvard, he earned his BA in 1915, and his MA in 1916

► During World War I, Cummings was an ambulance driver in France. However, because of his being outspoken in letters home he was arrested.
§ “To be made a prisoner by one’s own side struck Cummings as outrageous and yet funny; from the experience he produced an ironic, earthy celebration of the ordinary soldier and an attack on bureaucracy. His poetry continued the attack on depersonalized, commercial, exploitative mass culture and celebrated loners, lovers, and nonconformists.” (Baym 2113)
► His experiences in France inspired his novel The Enormous Room (1922)
► After the war he lived in Greenwich Village and in Paris
► He married three times.

► Cummings's first book of poems was Tulips and Chimneys (1923). His many other books include W (ViVa) (1931), No Thanks (1935), 95 Poems (1958), Etcetera: The Unpublished Poems (1982), and Complete Poems, 1904-1962 (Liveright, 1991). He is also a painter, a playwright of “Him” (1927), he wrote a travel book about Russia “Eimi” (1933), a ballet scenario “Tom” (1935), and “Santa Claus: A Morality” (1946).

► Awards that he has won are: J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1933 and 1951), Levinson Prize (1939), Shelley Memorial Award (1945), Academy of American Poets (1950), Harriet Monroe Poetry Award (1950), Eunice Titjeus Memorial Prize (1952), National Book Award (for Poems 1923-1954) (1955), Bollingen Prize (1958), Oscar Blumenthal Prize (1962)

► When Cummings was starting out his reviews were mixed. In the 1920’s most critics expressed “high praise for his themes and serious doubts about the legitimacy of his technical experiments” (Rotella 1). They thought that his typography was covering up the fact that he was a traditional poet with traditional themes. However as Cummings continued to work his critics became more serious about him and came to regard him as a real poet, as well as critically praise his use of typography.
§ “At one pole is praise for his transcending individualism, his social criticism, his technical innovations, and his refurbishing of worn conventions; at the other pole is condemnation for uncontrolled egoism, for an anachronistic conservatism, for “false” experimentalism and anti-intellectualism, for imprecision and unintelligibity, and for a lack of thematic and technical development.” (Rotella 3)

► About in Just- : The speaker of this poem is a child, celebrating the first days of spring which is seen through the runon way of saying names together as well as childlike words like “mud-luscious”. The balloonman in the poem is “goat footed” which is an allusion to the Greek figure of Pan- a satyr. Pan is seen as a sexual being, and many critics interpret the balloonman this way as well. His presence in the poem represents, to many critics, a child’s coming into adulthood or loss of innocence. Finally, the typography in this poem shows Cumming’s usual style. The spaces can be used to regulate tempo, and to create certain sounds in the reading of the poem “far and wee”. Also this typography shows Cummings’s nature as a visual person- a painter. 


in Just- 
spring        when the world is mud- 
luscious the little 
lame balloonman 

whistles        far        and wee 

and eddieandbill come 
running from marbles and 
piracies and it's 
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
it's 
spring
and 
      the 

goat-footed   
                               
balloonMan    whistles 
far 
and 
wee      

                  (Cummings 2113-2114)


Bibliography

Baym, Nina and Laurence B. Holland. Eds. “E.E Cummings.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Sixth Ed. New York: Norton, 2003. 2113.

Cohen, Milton A. The Aesthetics of E.E. Cummings’s Early Work. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987

Cummings, E.E. “in Just-.” The Notron Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Sixth Ed. New York: Norton, 2003. 2113-2114

Landles, Iain. “An Analysis of Two Poems by E.E. Cummings.” 2001. http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/issue10/Landles10.html (April 13, 2004)

Rotella, Guy. “Introduction.” Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings. Ed. Guy Rotella. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1984. 1-21.