{"id":634,"date":"2007-05-18T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2007-05-18T06:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=634"},"modified":"2007-05-19T08:01:43","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T14:01:43","slug":"poetry-friday-catherine-reefs-06-biographyof-ee-cummings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=634","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Catherine Reef’s ’06 biography
of E.E. Cummings"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Note: Kelly at Big A, little a has the Poetry Friday round-up here<\/a><\/strong> this week} . . . <\/em><\/p>\n

may my heart always be open to little
\nbirds who are the secrets of living
\nwhatever they sing is better than to know
\nand if men should not hear them men are old . . .<\/p>\n

(E.E. Cummings; from Collected Poems<\/em>, 1938)<\/center><\/p>\n

I just finished reading Catherine Reef\u2019s E.E. Cummings: A Poet\u2019s Life<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/em> (Clarion Books<\/a><\/strong>; December 2006; library copy). I\u2019m a big \u2018ol E.E.* fan, but I was surprised at how little I knew of his life. Reef does a fine job of not only bringing this unconventional, provocative poet\u2019s life to the reader (from his birth in Cambridge in 1894 to his death in 1962 at his beloved Joy Farm in New Hampshire at the age of sixty-seven) in an engaging prose, but she weaves into the biography many details about and a respect and appreciation for his poetry. The book is meticulously-documented with Reef\u2019s source notes as well. <\/p>\n

Beginning with his early life in Cambridge, Reef provides a detailed description of the city during the late 19th century when Cummings was a wee child (having been the firstborn and christened Edward after his father, but using his middle name, Estlin), and she takes us into his loving childhood home. His father, Edward Cummings, taught sociology at Harvard and in 1900 left the university to become a Unitarian minister in Boston. His mother, Rebecca, was \u201cthe most amazing person I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d E.E. once said, and eventually Edward and Rebecca added a girl to the family, E.E.\u2019s sister, Elizabeth. Reef\u2019s determined efforts to make the growing Cummings relate to a contemporary teen are effective (\u201cHe was a fair-haired young man with hazel eyes and a thin nose and who was so self-conscious about his acne that he hid his face behind a newspaper when riding on streetcars\u201d), explaining that in high school — at Cambridge Latin School -\u2013 he was younger and smaller than most of his classmates and avoided sports. A fellow student, she writes, once joked, \u201cGod forgive us for our short Cummings.\u201d In his spare time, he wrote poems inspired by nature and religion and tried to imitate the style of the New England poets on whose verses he had been raised (Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, etc.). <\/p>\n

After taking us through his college years at Harvard (and his initial attempts there to find his unique voice as a poet as well as a cubist-style, avant garde painter), we read how Cummings joined the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service, a Red Cross unit that was aiding the French army in WWI, which very much appealed to pacifists at that time, and his subsequent arrest along with comrade William Slater Brown. They were arrested on suspicion of espionage, having openly expressed pacifist opinions and seen as a possible enemy of France. They were tossed into a French concentration camp (that is, places of internment for prisoners of war or those whom the government suspected of spying -\u2013 this was before operational Nazi death camps, of course) in Normandy where they stayed for a little over three months. In a letter home to his mother, Cummings -\u2013 who had been eager to see a side of life he had not seen before -\u2013 wrote from prison, \u201cI am having the time of my life!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>Reef paints a portrait of the adult Cummings as very carefree and so entirely focused on his work to the point of single-mindedness and an irresponsibility toward the personal relationships in his life. She takes us through his romantic affairs, including the one with Elaine Orr Thayer with whom he had a child, Nancy. Though he tried to connect with Nancy as a child, his relationship with Elaine became strained and she went to great efforts to isolate Cummings from Nancy. We also read about how the adult Nancy made a sincere attempt to forge a tight father-daughter bond with Cummings, but he -\u2013 and his companion at the time, Marion Morehouse -\u2013 resisted. We are given an account of a man whose one, true love in life was, without any doubt, his writing. Beyond his personal relationships, she tells us about his colleagues and friends, particularly his free-spirited lifestyle while living in Greenwich Village circa 1917; his publication in 1922 of The Enormous Room<\/em><\/a><\/strong> (his Pilgrim’s Progress<\/em>-esque fictional account of his prison confinement) and the passionate — for both good and bad — responses from critics; his playwriting, including the 1920 production of Him<\/em>, which \u201claid {the} groundwork for theater of the absurd\u201d; his advice to his sister (\u201cNEVER BE AFRAID . . . NEVER take ANYONE\u2019S word for ANYTHING. Find out for yourself!!!! . . . There is no such thing as \u2018doing wrong\u2019 or \u2018being right about something\u2019 -\u2013 these are 4th hand absurdities invented by the aged in order to prevent the young from being alive)\u201d; the publication of four fairy tales he wrote for Nancy as a girl, published by Harcourt, Brace and World as a children\u2019s book in 1965 (which was news to me); his anti-war poems (Reef\u2019s segues from one period of Cummings\u2019 life to another are well-done, but I did cringe at this attempt to transition from his anti-war poetry into a discussion of his diagnosis in later life of arthritis of the spine: \u201cIf some of Cummings\u2019s poems sounded cranky, it may be because he was in pain.\u201d Yeesh. I think it diminishes his passionate anti-war sentiments and wish she had chosen a gentler seque); and how the \u201cmutability of life\u201d increasingly became a central theme in Cummings\u2019 work (such as in this poem<\/a><\/strong>, one of my all-time favorites). <\/p>\n

Reef\u2019s inclusion of commentary on Cummings\u2019 unique, unorthodox style makes this an excellent introduction for students (and adults) who are perhaps a bit baffled by his idiosyncratic typography, line breaks, capitalization, punctuation, etc. Here are some examples of what she touches upon that even I, as a long-time E.E. fan, enjoyed reading:<\/p>\n