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
If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.
because it's Spring thingS dare to do people (& not the other way round)because it 's A pril Lives lead their own persons(in stead of everybodyelse's)but what's wholly marvellous my Darling is that you & i are more than you & i(be ca us e It's we)
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most 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.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world- unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Laughing is just another way of showing people your wise
most people are perfectly afraid of silence
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.