Why does e e cummings lowercase

His work uses capital letters all the time, in fact—just not always in places your English teacher would approve of. For example, he almost always wrote the pronoun "I" as "i. As a result, lower-case type is the one thing everyone associates with Cummings, and many take for granted that his name should be styled as "e. In the preface to a book about Cummings, critic Harry T. In fact, Cummings generally signed his name "E.

Cummings," in regular mixed case, just like everyone else. Cummings, it isn't just a stunt. He had his name put legally into lower case, and in his later books the titles and his name were always in lower case. So be it—all this goes wi th the iconoclasm of the twenties, with its unpunctuated, uncapitalized Poetry.

The lower case is a kind of continuing talisman of cummings, though it doesn't embed him in the twenties. When Marion, Cummings' widow, read this, she shot back to one of the publishers of the book in a letter: "you should not have allowed H. I lean slightly, however, toward the capitalized form even for the latter places, for I think that Cummings could do what he wanted to do about capitals, but that we should follow standard forms, since we are not poets in this. Lower case forms when used by the writer for his own name may imply humility, but when used by others for his name may imply condescension.

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Decapitalization Page history last edited by Meaghan Kelly 13 years, 1 month ago. His voice is deemed to speak both to and for those millions who inexplicably feel as if they should like poetry but who, in truth, don't. As a result, Cummings is one of those poets whose posthumous popularity far outweighs his critical reputation. Sawyer-Laucanno argues that the two are related, that "a writer of broad appeal can be dismissed" by envious commentators.

If this were true, then surely Robert Frost, unarguably the century's most popular American poet both during and since his own life, would have long since become a critical non-entity.

Any judicious Selected of Cummings is bound to have its moments. But the work is simply not at the races compared to the depth of achievement of contemporaries like Wallace Stevens, whose first collection, Harmonium, appeared the same year as Cummings's, or Frost, who died a handful of months after Cummings.

The idea that he was "one of the foremost innovators of modernism" is now untenable. Cummings's poems have long since begun rotting in their own sentimentality. What must have seemed innovatory to their first readers has proven over time to be a staid lyric gift disguised by typing - albeit typing of a particularly snazzy order. Djuna Barnes, author of the extraordinary modernist novel Nightwood, broke her leg in her Greenwich Village apartment in the mids.

She telephoned Cummings who lived across the street. He "rescued" his friend in a feat of derring-do that involved fire escapes and trees. For years afterwards he would holler sardonically across the afternoon silence, "Djuna, are you still alive? Please update your payment details to keep enjoying your Irish Times subscription. Lower case study of a poet Sat, May 28, , Most Viewed. Watch More Videos. Coronavirus Explore our guides to help you through the pandemic.

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