Despite Cummings' affinity for
avant-garde styles, much of his work is traditional. Many of his poems are
sonnets, and he occasionally made use of the
blues form and
acrostics. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of
love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world. His poems are also often rife with satire.
While his poetic forms, and even themes, show a close continuity with the romantic tradition, his work universally shows a particular idiosyncrasy of
syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger phrases and sentences. Many of his most striking poems do not involve any typographical or punctuational innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.
As well as being influenced by notable sources
modernists including Stein and Pound, Cummings' early work drew upon the imagist experiments of
Amy Lowell. Later his visits to Paris exposed him to
Dada and
surrealism, which in turn permeated his work. He also liked to incorporate nature and death imagery into much of his poetry.
While some of his poetry is
free verse (with no concern for
rhyme and
scansion), many of his poems have a recognizable
sonnet structure of 14 lines, with an intricate rhyme scheme. A number of his poems feature a typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page, often making little sense until read aloud, at which point the meaning and emotion become clear. Cummings, who was also a painter, understood the importance of presentation, and used typography to "paint a picture" with some of his poems.
The seeds of Cummings' unconventional style appear well established, even in his earliest work. At age six he wrote to his father:
FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,
HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,
FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,
LOVE, YOU DEAR,
ESTLIN.
Following
The Enormous Room, his first published work was a collection of poems entitled
Tulips and Chimneys (1923). This collection was the public's first encounter with his characteristic eccentric use of grammar and punctuation.
Some of Cummings's most famous poems do not involve much, if any, odd typography or punctuation, but still carry his unmistakable style. For example, the aptly titled "
anyone lived in a pretty how town" begins:
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
"why must itself up every of a park" begins as follows:
why must itself up every of a park
anus stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer "
no"?
Readers sometimes experience a jarring, incomprehensible effect because the poems do not act in accordance with the conventional combinatorial rules that generate typical English sentences. (For example "Why must itself..." or "they sowed their isn't [...]"). His readings of Gertrude Stein in the early part of the century probably functioned as a springboard into this aspect of his artistic development (in the same way that Robert Walser's work acted as a springboard for Franz Kafka). In some respects, Cummings' work is more stylistically continuous with Stein's than with any other poet or writer.
In addition, a number of Cummings' poems feature, in part or in whole, intentional misspellings; several feature phonetic spellings intended to represent particular dialects. Cummings also made use of inventive formations of compound words, as in "in Just-", which features words such as "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful".
Many of Cummings' poems address social issues and satirize society (see "why must itself up every of a park", above), but have an equal or even stronger bias toward romanticism: time and again his poems celebrate love, sex and the season of rebirth (see "anyone lived in a pretty how town" in its entirety).
His talent extended to children's books, novels, and painting. A notable example of his versatility is an introduction he wrote for a collection of the comic strip Krazy Kat<i>.
Examples of Cummings' unorthodox typographical style can be seen in his poem "
the sky was candy luminous...".
