Biography
Edward Estlin Cummings was born at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October
14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek
at the Cambridge Latin High School. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A.
in 1916, both from Harvard. His studies there introduced him to avant garde
writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology
Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for
France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his
assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the
French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his
novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural
Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also
traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso,
whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill's." Serving as Cummings' debut to a
wider American audience, these "experiments" foreshadowed the synthetic cubist
strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling
and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new,
highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was
often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his
work towards further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity,
especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful
mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an
Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles
Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958,
and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he
was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills
Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
Source
14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek
at the Cambridge Latin High School. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A.
in 1916, both from Harvard. His studies there introduced him to avant garde
writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology
Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for
France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his
assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the
French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his
novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural
Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also
traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso,
whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill's." Serving as Cummings' debut to a
wider American audience, these "experiments" foreshadowed the synthetic cubist
strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling
and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new,
highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was
often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his
work towards further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity,
especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful
mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an
Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles
Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958,
and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he
was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills
Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
Source