E.E. Cummings : a biography /

Includes bibliographical references (pages 545-588) and index.

Their son -- In just- spring -- Poet of simplicity -- A smattering of languages, a first taste of independence, and the truest friends -- The graduate student as poet -- Poetic excursions -- La guerre -- Singing of Olaf and Elaine -- Poet, painter, and papa in New York -- The enormous room -- Abroad -- An American in Paris -- Tulips and chimneys -- Marriage and unmarriage -- The life and times of Edward Seul -- Anne -- Him -- Viva Cummings -- Worlds of was (and is) -- Carefully into growing and into being and into loving -- Nourish my failure with thy freedom -- Never the soft adventure of undoom -- Freedom as breakfastfood -- Allegiance only to the imagination -- We know who we are -- Xaipe and controversy -- Ordeals by audience -- When such marvels vanish -- Steering for dream.

Throughout the 45 years of his professional writing life, Cummings consistently celebrated the ordinary, reviled pretentiousness, scourged conformity, experimented boldly with words and syntax and punctuation, and wrote some of the most erotic and tender love poetry in the English language. Yet Cummings could also be difficult, truculent, opinionated, wrong-headed, emotional, bigoted and egotistical. Dubbed by Ezra Pound as "Whitman's one living descendant," Cummings sang of himself and of America in a unique voice, as resonant now as it was a half-century ago. Charismatic and famous among the famous, Cummings always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and was a major presence wherever he resided, whether in Cambridge, Europe or New York. He counted some of the most important artists of his time as friends: Pound, Hemingway, Dylan Thomas and many more.--From publisher description.