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
a connotation of infinity sharpens the temporal splendor of this night when souls which have forgot frivolity in lowliness,noting the fatal flight of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream down eager avenues of lifelessness consider for how much themselves shall gleam, in the poised radiance of perpetualness. When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought is like a woman amorous to be known; and man,whose here is alway worse than naught, feels the tremendous yonder for his own— on such a night the sea through her blind miles of crumbling silence seriously smiles
...sunlight is (life and day are)only loaned:whereas night is given(night and death and the rain are given;and given is how beautifully snow)
Peering from some high window; at the gold of November sunset (and feeling that if day has to become night this is a beautiful way).
Do not hate or fear the artist in yourselves... Honor and love him...do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow. Only the artist in yourself is more truthful than the night.
there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singing but more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness
in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems
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.
Who knows if the moon's a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky filled with pretty people?
I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
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.
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.
Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.
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'.
It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.