Influences of E.E. Cummings?

Question

Exactly what it sounds like. What in EE Cummings life influenced his poems the most?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Cummings was a modern poet. Like most poets of his time, cummings was influenced by WWI especially because of time spent in a prisoncamp in France, which influenced his writing of The Enormous Room. He was influenced by other modern poets including Stein and Pound both of whom he was introduced to in college. If you look at their poetry, the influence is evident.

If you can get your hands on a Norton Anthology, the biography for ee cummings is excellent.

Try these two online biographies as well:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/156
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/e__…

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

Thanks a ton! You've been a fantastic help =)

Answer 2

With all those free spaces between words and all those tabbed-in lines, it's like a poem written with the space bar glued down.

Amidst all this chaos, however, there is a tiny bit of order - or at least the semblance of order. There are "stanzas" of four lines followed by a "refrain" of one line. Of course, the "stanzas" don't really make complete units in and of themselves. In fact, they're not really stanzas. They just look like stanzas. Gotcha! Cummings delights in playing conventional forms (and conventional ideas about poetics) against radically innovative new tricks.

From Shmoop/in just/ee cummings

Source(s):

http://www.shmoop.com/literary-device/po…