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Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Edward
Estlin Cummings attended Harvard (B.A., 1915; M.A., 1916), served as a
volunteer ambulance driver in France during World War I, was imprisoned for
three months in a French detention camp, served in the United States Army
(1918-1919), then studied art and painting in Paris (1920-1924).
His prose narrative The Enormous Room
(1922), a recollection of his imprisonment, brought instant acclaim. Several
volumes of poetry followed. His experiments with punctuation, line division,
and capitalization make his work immediately recognizable. In a letter to
young poets published in a high school newspaper, Cummings said, "[N]othing
is quite so easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly
this nearly all the time, and whenever we do it, we're not poets."
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e.e. cummings
(1894-1962) |
V
in spite of everything
which breathes and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds
-before leaving my room
i turn,and (stooping
through the morning) kiss
this pillow,dear
where our heads lived and were.
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[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
not fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
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stand with your lover on the ending earth
stand with your lover on the ending earth-
and while a(huge which by which huger than
huge)whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow
suppose we could not love,dear;imagine
ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousand hearts which don't and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sands,at pitiless the mercy of
time time time time time
-how fortunate are you and i,whose home
is timelessness:we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day(or maybe even less)
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