{"id":513,"date":"2014-10-14T15:01:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T19:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/?p=513"},"modified":"2014-10-14T15:01:40","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T19:01:40","slug":"creativity-breadcrumb-19-its-e-e-cummingss-120th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/2014\/10\/14\/creativity-breadcrumb-19-its-e-e-cummingss-120th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity Breadcrumb 19: It&#8217;s E. E. Cummings&#8217;s 120th birthday!"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>fsg_json['fsg_post_513'] = [\n{id: 516, image: 'http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings.jpg', extlink: '', thumb: 'https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings-290x290.jpg', permalink: '<div class=\"galleria-layeritem\"><a title=\"Permalink\" href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/2014\/10\/14\/creativity-breadcrumb-19-its-e-e-cummingss-120th-birthday\/e-e-cummings\/#0\"><div class=\"galleria-link-bookmark\"><\/div><\/a><\/div>', layer: '<div class=\"galleria-infolayer\"><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\" style=\"padding-right: 20px;\"><h1>e-e-cummings<\/h1><\/div><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\"><a title=\"Permalink\" href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/2014\/10\/14\/creativity-breadcrumb-19-its-e-e-cummingss-120th-birthday\/e-e-cummings\/#0\"><div class=\"galleria-link-bookmark\"><\/div><\/a><\/div><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\" style=\"padding-right: 20px;\"><\/div>'}\n];<\/script>\n<p><em>food for creative making, doing, and thinking<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_516\" style=\"width: 458px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a data-postid=\"fsg_post_513\" data-imgid=\"516\" href=\"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-516\" class=\"size-full wp-image-516\" src=\"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings.jpg\" alt=\"Source: poetryfoundation.org\" width=\"448\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings.jpg 448w, https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/files\/2014\/10\/e-e-cummings-300x196.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-516\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: poetryfoundation.org<\/p><\/div>\n<p>One of the most influential figures in the modernist poetry movement, E. E. Cummings was born 120 years ago today. Cummings&#8217;s life is almost as interesting as his work itself, and I could spend hours talking about both his biography and his poetry; however, I couldn&#8217;t help but bring up a few facts about Cummings&#8217;s life that I found most interesting in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/bio\/e-e-cummings\">biography<\/a> on the Poetry Foundation website.\u00a0<span style=\"color: #505050\">Cummings always knew he wanted to be a poet, even from a very young age.\u00a0&#8220;Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, he wrote a poem a day,&#8221; which I find to be an incredible display of ambition and dedication to his craft. Much of his childhood was spent studying and practicing traditional poetic forms. It was not until he attended Harvard University in 1916 that Cummings really began to experiment with more modernist approaches to poetry. Cummings then &#8220;began to write avant-garde poems in which conventional punctuation and syntax were ignored in favor of a dynamic use of language.&#8221; Following his graduation from Harvard, Cummings engaged in a variety of jobs, ranging from\u00a0working for a mail order book dealer to serving in World War I by volunteering for a French ambulance service to being drafted into the US Army upon the country&#8217;s entrance into the war in 1918. Cummings resumed writing poetry upon his departure from the army in 1919, which led to\u00a0a very successful and productive period of time for the writer. He published his first book,\u00a0<em>The Enormous Room, <\/em>and his\u00a0first collection of poems,\u00a0<em>Tulips and Chimneys,<\/em>\u00a0in 1923, which is said to have &#8220;established his reputation as an avant-garde poet conducting daring experiments with language.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I really appreciate Cummings&#8217;s careful attention to and manipulation of language through syntax and sound. Cummings&#8217;s work is distinctive in that it has a certain consciousness about it in terms of how it is presented on the page itself. Cummings is also very innovative in his use of punctuation, capitalization, and spacing. His heavy use of parentheses in many of his poems allows for the words to read more fluidly and freely, similar to the stream-of-consciousness that we all experience while thinking day to day. Despite Cummings&#8217;s sophisticated use of various poetic techniques, all\u00a0of Cummings&#8217;s poems are centered around rather mundane subject matter, or, as many critics claim, are &#8220;<span style=\"color: #505050\">unabashedly focused on such traditional and somewhat passe poetic themes as love, childhood, and flowers.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Cummings is also considered to be one of the greatest love poets of all time. Here is one of my favorites titled &#8220;[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">i carry your heart with me(i carry it in<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">my heart)i am never without it(anywhere<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">by only me is your doing,my darling)<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0i fear<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">and it\u2019s you are whatever a moon has always meant<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">and whatever a sun will always sing is you<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">here is the deepest secret nobody knows<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">and this is the wonder that&#8217;s keeping the stars apart<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">This piece is an outstanding display, in my opinion, of Cummings&#8217;s profound ability to convey strong emotion in his writing despite his, what may be considered incoherent, fragmented sentence structure. The use of parentheses instills in me a sense of conflicting thoughts and emotions which are common in any type of relationship, especially a romantic one. Perhaps the most striking feature of Cummings&#8217;s poems is the honesty that is so apparent in the language and structure of the poem. Every time I read one of Cummings&#8217;s poems, I feel inspired to simply record what I am thinking no matter how it may turn out on the page, and maybe to manipulate it later on&#8211;for I am hopeful that it could potentially turn into something beautiful.<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #505050\">It is for this reason that I feel that Cummings&#8217;s poetry has endured for almost a century, and continues to influence poets today.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>food for creative making, doing, and thinking One of the most influential figures in the modernist poetry movement, E. E. Cummings was born 120 years ago today. Cummings&#8217;s life is <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/2014\/10\/14\/creativity-breadcrumb-19-its-e-e-cummingss-120th-birthday\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"sr-only\">Read more about Creativity Breadcrumb 19: It&#8217;s E. E. Cummings&#8217;s 120th birthday!<\/span>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3743,"featured_media":516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3743"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/creativearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}