E.E. Cummings(1894-1962)

Edward Estlin Cummings had an idyllic childhood in a spacious Cambridge home amid an affluent, extended family. His father, Edward Cummings, was a Unitarian minister and former Harvard professor who devoted much time to Estlin with spontaneous children's games and rituals. Estlin often went to the circus, zoo, and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and even had a treehouse with a miniature stove to cook popcorn and marshmallows. He spent blissful summers in Silver Lake, New Hampshire, where his father taught him woodcraft and nature lore. His mother, Rebecca, encouraged Estlin to write and draw. After attending Harvard and serving as an ambulance driver in France during World War I, he began to exhibit his paintings, and published his first poem in 1920. Much of his poems reflected his Wordsworthian love of nature, optimism, and the rhythmic nonsense phrasing of nursery rhymes. Over his career, his writing grew increasingly versatile, ranging from religious reverence to biting political satire. Since he was a painter, he brought an unusual visual orientation to the placement of his poems on the page, often using eccentric punctuation and all-lowercase letters. He was equally known for his erotic love poems, almost all of them written for his third wife, Marion Morehouse Cummings, an actress and model. He was the author of dozens of books of poetry, including several autobiographical works. He lived the last 45 years of his life in New York City.