It”s become fashionable to diss Edward Estlin Cummings again. Best know to the world as e. e. cummings, the way he signed his name, his fresh takes on language and wordplaying infused his poetry and made him one of the most recognized and distinctive voices in modern American poetry. You can read all about his honors and the debates about his poetry in dozens of other places. This post is a personal one – because more than any other poet, Cummings is responsible for my own voice and my love of poetry.

I think that my first Cummings poem was in-Just, with its delightful run-together words and made-up compounds (puddle-wonderful, mudlusciuos). It was irresistible to my ordered little eleven year old mind, and I thoroughly delighted in the way that the words danced on the page in unlikely combinations. That same year, probably later in the same chapter in English Lit, I discovered Anyone who lived in a pretty how town with up so floating many bells down, and I was forever hooked. In freshman year, I borrowed his 100 Poems collection from the school library, and (forgive me Sr. Mary Louise) never returned it. In the more than thirty years since then, it is the only book of the thousands that I have owned that I have never lost. It has always been with me.

It was reading Cummings that taught me to read poetry with a critical eye, to take a poem word by word and line by line and understand what the poet had put into it for me to find. Before anyone taught me the names for them, he had taught me to use tools like enjambment, onomatopeia, personification, extended metaphor, implied metaphor, slant rhyme, dissonance, assonance. He taught me how to break rules gracefully, with meaning and forethought, how to combine words into compounds that became something new and beautiful in themselves.

For all his vaunted unconventionality, though, the Cummings works that most drew me were his reworkings of traditional forms like the villanelle and the sonnet, and to this day, I maintain that there has never been a more beautiful love poem than his sonnet, it may not always be so, and i say. It was from those works that I learned the impact of breaking rules judiciously. Those poems were my poetic equivalent of “Civil Disobedience”, tracts that explained how and why it is important to understand the rules and the reasons that they exist before you break them, and how to break them effectively and with meaning.

So… happy birthday, Edward Estlin Cummings. And thank you.

Some Cummings poems:

If

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn”t a lie,
Life would be delight,–
But things couldn”t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn”t be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I”d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn”t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,–
Yet they”d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn”t be we.

e.e. cummings

Thy fingers make early flowers

Thy fingers make early flowers
of all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smoothness which
sings,saying
(though love be a day)
do not fear,we will go amaying.

thy whitest feet crisply are straying.
Always
thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,
whose strangeness much
says;singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?

To be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death,thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing).

e.e. cummings

All in green my love went riding

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

e.e. cummings

when god lets my body be

when god lets my body be

From each brave eye shall sprout a tree fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow

Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

e.e. cummings

Buffalo Bill”s

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

e.e. cummings

it may not always be so;and i say
it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another”s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not fara away;
if on another”s face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be–
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
e.e. cummings

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