Almanac of Story Tellers: E.E. Cummings

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Oct. 14th

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     It is the 286th day of the year, leaving 79 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1894, the poet E.E. Cummings was born.

    He told his stories in an avant-garde form of poetry all his own. His choice of language and style -- words with meanings he invented, nontraditional use of capital letters, and atypical punctuations -- made him a popular and well regarded American poet who is still studied today.

    For instance, his poem, Buffalo Bill's, uses line shifts and spacings, and words set off or put together to show speed or amazement. 

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Buffalo Bill's

defunct

                who used to

                ride a watersmooth-silver

                                                                 stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                                                                             Jesus

he was a handsome man 

                                                    and what I want to know is 

how do you like your blue-eyed boy 

Mister Death

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    Cummings original use of capital or lower case letters often caused his name to be spelt as e.e. cummings, but he was uncaring about the form of his name. He often signed his name as E.E. Cummings, and used that in legal documents and in his books of poetry.

    He served in the ambulance corps in Paris during the First World War, but was detained and imprisoned for holding anti-war views. But he later was drafted, and returned to serve in the U.S. Army until the war ended.

    For a time, he made Paris his home, also traveling to Africa and Mexico

    In his early years, he also showed his art work, but they received far less attention than his poems. A play, him, was produced in New York. In 1933, he recorded, in 400-plus pages of experimental prose, Eimi, about a trip he had taken to the Soviet Union.

  He was a prolific poet, with nearly 3,000 poems to his credit. He published many books of poetry during his life, the first being Tulips and Chimneys in 1933. They were later compiled into two volumes under the name Complete Poems in 1968.

    Cummings died in 1962.