e. e. cummings
e. e. cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings, known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as an eminent voice of 20th century English literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth14 October 1894
CityCambridge, MA
CountryUnited States of America
mean people life-and-death
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people?
mean wife people
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by "living"? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives.
father mean eye
Certainly the most obvious . . . example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.
mean fighting night
To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we're not poets.
city coming filled imagination keen knows sky
Who knows if the moon's a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky filled with pretty people?
american-poet bird learn rather sing stars teach
I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
beach blowing came chased discovered fingers five home horrible large lose maggie molly ourselves rays remember round shell sideways small smooth stranded whatever
maggie and millie and molly and may"maggie and millie and molly and maywent down to the beach (to play one day)and maggie discovered a shell that sangso sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,andmillie befriended a stranded starwho's rays five languid fingers were;and molly was chased by a horrible thingwhich raced sideways while blowing bubbles:andmay came home with a smooth round stoneas small as a 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.
american-poet battle best fight hardest nobody somebody stop
To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.
writing poetry matter
Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.
travel memorable three
The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.
courage grow takes turn
It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
life girl flower
Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. Easy? Of course - you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. I never met him. Who? Everybody. Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting? I am. Pardon me? I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational. Not all painting. No: housepainting is representational. And what does a housepainter represent? Ten dollars an hour. In other words, you don't want to be serious - It takes two to be serious.
children eye wrinkles
Lessons hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he by, any chance, tell children that there are such monstrous things as peace and goodwill...a corrupter of youth no doubt...
world born made
A world of made is not a world of born