Saturday, March 29, 2008

e.e. cummings is an unconventional poet who lives in the early 20th Century. He is famous for using incomplete sentences, punctualtion symbols, compound words, and other innovative language forms to create avant-garde poetry. Although he inventes his own style, many of e.e’s works include traditional poetic forms including sonnets. Cummings gets his ideas from other writers, particularly Gertrude Stien. Some of his works make fun of various issues including love or aspects of society. Besides creating poems, the poet also writes novels, paints, and does the comic strip Krazy Kat. E.e. Cummings uses his talents to create both traditional and non-traditional forms of poetry.

Many literary experts view the poet e.e. cummings as a cutting-edge writer (Wikipedia). Many of his work is like this, but most it is traditional. Several of his poems are sonnets. Other are in blues form or acrostics. Most of Cummings poetry deals with love, nature, satire, and the relationship between the individual and masses.

Most scholars in literature say that his poetry deal with the romantic tradition in the 1800’s. However, there are oddities about his syntax, or organizing words into phrases or sentences. Much of his poetry do not have typical writing or punctuation styles. Cummings uses syntactic innovations. Also modernist poets including Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, and Ezra Pound influence the writer with their imagist experiments.

Some of Cummings work in free verse which is poetry that is not concerned with rhyming or metering. The sonnets have a 14 line structure and complicated rhyme scheme. Other featured about Cummings work is his typographic. He puts words, word parts, or punctuation scattered across the page. Such writings do not make sense until they are read aloud. Cummings was also a pointer and said that he uses typology to create mental pictures of his poems.

The writer experimented with various styles a young age. For example, at the age of six, he wrote a poem to his father:
FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,
HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,
FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,
LOVE, YOU DEAR,
ESTLIN.

In the early 1923, Cummings published his first work called Tulips and Chimneys. This let the public see his unconventional use of grammar and punctuation. However, some of the writer’s most famous pieces do not use an odd uses of typography or punctuation. For example, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” and “why must itself up every of a park” uses conventional ways to write poems:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

And

why must itself up every of a park
anus stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer "no"?

However, the poet uses his unconventional style in other such works including Buffalo Bill’s/defunct. Many people experience a sudden and incomprehensible effect when they read Cummings poetry. This comes from the writer breaking away from traditional forms of writing verse. For example, he writes of “Why must itself” and “they sowed their isn’t” with nontraditional grammar structures (wikipedia). E.e. says that the writings of Stein inspires him to write poetry and influences his early work

Cummings intentionally writes words with misspellings, phonetic devices, or incomplete sentences to represent certain dialects. One of his innovations include inventing compound words including: in Just-; puddle-wonderful; and eddieandbill. The poet uses these words in his work called “Chansom Innocent.” Other invented words in the writing include balloonman who is an ancient Greek nature god who is half-man and half-goat.

Besides inventing a new form of writing, Cummings also satirizes and addresses social issues as well. For example, the line “why must itself up every park?” implies a bias towards romanticism. Many of the common themes in e.e’s works celebrate love, sex, and rebirth. Besides writing poetry, Cummings also produces children’s books, novels, paintings, and a comic strip called Krazy Kat.

E.e. Cummings uses his talents to create both traditional and non-traditional forms of poetry. Many of his innovations include incomplete sentences, compound words, punctuation symbols, and other writing styles to create original verse. Besides using free verse, Cummings also produces traditional forms of poems including sonnets. Gertrude Stein is his biggest influence. Other writers give him ideas too. Many of his themes include love or making fun of social institutions. Cummings shows his diverse talents by writing novels, painting, and doing a comic strip called Krazy Kat.


Works Cited

“e.e. cummings.” Wikipedia. 5 March 2008. 27 March 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._e._cummings#Poetry

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