Ee Cumming: Form In Function Analysis

E.E. Cummings: Form in Function When reading anything-- be it the smallest stanza or largest epic novel--, one of the first things one notices, albeit perhaps subconscious, is form. An author who tends to shed light on the poignancy of grammar and form in writing is the brilliant ee cummings. Cummings used an original style of wording and format to further convey a point, specifically in his poems "ygUDuh," "the sky was," "i carry your heart with me," and “!blac.” Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 to well-known Unitarian parents in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cummings had known from a young age that he was destined to be a poet, and his parents greatly supported his creative gifts. He wrote a poem every day between ages eight and twenty-two, giving him ample time to explore the traditional forms of poetry at the time and to dabble in his own unique style. In 1917, cummings served in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps while the First World War raged on. It was during this time that he

Without his influence of structure, the poem would merely be, “Black against white sky”. There is a world of difference between what it literally was, letter by letter, and what he made it. By using structure creatively and using odd punctuation marks in places that they most certainly don’t belong in a grammatical sense it creates more of a feeling of distraction and disorder. The poem is given an opposite meaning without even changing a single word. If you were to fully analyze this poem without all of its additions, it would be the absolute antithesis of what he has made it to be: interesting and mild chaotic. “!blac” is the perfect example of how punctuation can take something so far. “Cummings never placed capitals or punctuation marks at random—there was always some point behind the deviancy”