Edward Estlin Cummings was born in 1894 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, went to Harvard – John Dos Passos was a classmate and friend – then volunteered for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps during the Great War. His outspoken anti-war sentiments led to a detention camp; he wrote The Enormous Room, a critical account of his experiences on the Western Front, which was praised by, among others, F Scott Fitzgerald. Despite an initial enthusiasm for avant garde art, and his liberal views when young, he became steadily more conservative, both artistically and politically, as he got older, condemning communists, communism and the Soviet Union, registering as a Republican and speaking in support of Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. Famously prolific, he wrote nearly 3,000 poems, as well as many essays, several plays and a couple of autobiographical novels, before he died at North Conway, New Hampshire, in 1962.
Cummings is, of course, famous for the unconventional orthography of his work – especially for writing his name in lower case, without points – but during his life he used both upper and lower case versions of his name. Many of his poems celebrate love and sex, often with a sense of humour, and sometimes with satirical intent, and now Norton has brought together 50 of these poems about lust and love, culled from Cummings’ original manuscripts by George James Firmage, with 13 of his erotic line drawings. Unfortunately, the verse hasn’t aged very well: “lord he called and angel stood / (poke me darling o poke me good) / with a big thick sword all flaming / – o my god I’m coming”.
