E.E.Cummings

(October 14, 1894- September 3, 1962)

Edward Estlin Cummings was a poet who admired Pablo Picasso; he had frequently visited Paris, France to meet the other poets and the artists. He graduated from Harvard with the both degrees, B.A. and M.A. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894. Cummings wrote some poems that published in a book called Eight Harvard Poets just before he participated World War I as a volunteer for ambulance driver. (the academy of American Poets) He had become famous after his books came out, The Enormous room and Tulips and Chimneys, after he returned to New York after his studies at France in Arts. Cummings always loved to play with his words in his poems and quotations. he liked to write about love and nature poems, he also created his own poetic style in 1918 because he was a painter so he had extra talent. He created so many poems that got him critcized, he talked about sex and the war that led the young readers to be interested. Cummings was the first person who started the new way to express the poems by making his poems with different kind of form, punctation, and didn't follow the right techniques. During his writing, he got alot of honors, fellowship award, and prize.

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befreiended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as as world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15406

This poetry was talking about the four girls who were having their own time at the beach and it showed the release from the pains and sadness. The girls with their objects that they found at the beach helped them to forget what they had before they came to the beach. The girls are being themselves by showing what they like to do at the beach it is like its their opportunity to be free for a day. The poem showed that there are the up and downs with these girls and they had to go through the times where they felt the pain and finally release them by going to the beach themselves and it shows that they each have different personalities. There are possibility of believing in a good cause in your own future is to be with yourself and explore what is in front of you.

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 blueeyed boy

Mister Death

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15399

Buffalo Bill’s poem expressed in Cummings’ anger, he critcized the cowboy’s life. Cummings used his imagination to express that the cowboy killed the buffalos as fast and easy as killing the pigeons. Same time, he was telling that the cowboy was a “small town hero” due his description of handsome. At the ending of the poem, Cummings was asking the cowboy how did he felt when he died just like the buffalos. He used the word, defunct like the cowboy is not in use anymore. I think that this poem is expressed in a conversational way because he asked the cowboy what it was like to be those buffalos.

e e cummings by Katy Kelley