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Cummings at Silver Lake

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Cummings at Silver Lake

Tag Archives: E. E. Cummings

Mr. Cummings, “Your poems are so hard to understand….”

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Joy Farm, Painting

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E. E. Cummings, Joy FArm

Best known as a poet, E.E. Cummings was also an accomplished artist.  While his early work was often abstract, later in his life he frequently painted the view of the mountains from Joy Farm. “Many of the landscapes are either weirdly surreal and muted or else bursting with mad swirls of brilliant colors. His favorite (or at least most frequent) landscape subject by far was Mt Chocorua in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which often either dominates the canvas or at least makes its presence known (á la Mt Fuji in traditional Japanese painting).”  quote from Ken Lopez Bookseller.

 

In a “conversation” with himself, Cummings’ compares his paintings with his poetry.

“Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.
Easy?
Of course—you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.
I never met him.
Who?
Everybody.
Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?
I am.
Pardon me?
I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.
Not all painting.
No: housepainting is representational.
And what does a housepainter represent?
Ten dollars an hour.
In other words, you don’t want to be serious—
It takes two to be serious.

E.E. Cummings in “Forward to an Exhibit: II” (1945)

Cummings is not just for adults

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Poetry

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E. E. Cummings, Spring

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

(E.E. Cummings Complete Poems 27)
balloonman

“Maybe he had a mental problem”, said Becky, an eighth grader, on her first time reading “in Just-“. So begins a wonderful article by Audri L. Wood describing her classroom teaching Cummings’ poetry to adolescents.

“Fifteen minutes later…the entire class had dissected every potential meaning from every line, every space (or lack thereof), every word. Fifteen minutes of discussion. Fifteen minutes of asking why he didn’t have to follow preset formats for sonnets, haiku, and the like. Fifteen minutes of examining how they had written poetry, how they had manipulated spacing, capitalization, and words. Fifteen minutes of memories exploded, of breathless voices of running children, of the sounds of shoes pounding the pavement during hopscotch and the smacking of the jump-rope, of inseparable friends, and of the passing notice and constant awareness of adults being present and of their whistles, reminding you that it is not just a dream, that it is spring.”

(From Spring The Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society, New Series Number 6, 1997.)

Poetry at the Post Office

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Silver Lake

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E. E. Cummings, Famous American Poets, Silver Lake Post Office

CummingsForever-2012-single-BGv1

In 2012 the USPS issued a sheet of American Poet stamps commemorating ten famous poets of the 20th century. One of these poets was Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings.

Many current residents of Madison, New Hampshire remember seeing Estlin and Marion Morehouse on their way to and from the Silver Lake train depot, which housed the Silver Lake Post Office. Arriving in his 1929 open top Ford, Marion would drop off and pick up packages, which presumably contained poetry book manuscripts, while Estlin stood by the road and looked out at the lake. He always wore a long driving coat and white gloves.

Although the lobby has been re-arranged, the train depot is still the local post office for Silver Lake.

Depot

At the head of the lake stands a memorial to the Reverend Edward Cummings, Estlin’s father, and Walter Kennett.

IMG_0088IMG_0082

Who was E.E. Cummings?

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in Joy Farm, Silver Lake

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E. E. Cummings

Known as the poet of “little i”, Edward Estlin Cummings signed many, but not all of his works e.e.cummings.

who are you,little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window:at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

“At one time the most famous American poet after Robert Frost, “by erasing the sacred left margin, breaking down words into syllables and letters, employing eccentric punctuation, and indulging in all kinds of print-based shenanigans, Cummings brought into question some of our basic assumptions about poetry, grammar, sign, and language itself, and he also succeeded in giving many a typesetter a headache…. Cummings reveled in breaking the rules of grammar, punctuation, orthography, and lineation. Measured by sheer boldness of experiment, no American poet compares to him, for he slipped Houdini-like out of the locked box of the stanza, then leaped from the platform of the poetic line into an unheard-of way of writing poetry.” (From: Is That a Poem? The case for E.E. Cumming by Billy Collins in Slate, April 20, 2005).

On October 14, 1894 E. E. Cummings, the well-known American poet, author and artist was born at home on Irving Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Named Edward Estlin Cummings, he was called Estlin by family and friends. The only son of Edward Norton Cummings, a college professor and minister of the Unitarian Church, Estlin was home schooled by his mother for several years and then educated at Cambridge Latin School and Harvard. In 1899 when Estlin was 5 his father bought a large farm on a hillside in the Town of Madison, New Hampshire. Not far from the crystal clear waters of Silver Lake, the farm possessed an incredible view of Mount Chocorua and the Sandwich Mountain Range. Soon after began the life-long relationship between E.E. Cummings and the town around Silver Lake and the people who lived there. Previously owned by one Ephraim Joy, the property was known as the “Joy Farm”. Here Estlin wrote poetry from an early age, built teepees and tree houses, rode the family horse, swam in Silver Lake and played with the neighborhood children. Later he painted landscapes and nudes, escaped from his often tumultuous adult life in Boston and New York, and finally settled down with the love of his life, the model and photographer, Marion Morehouse. On September 2, 1962 Cummings had a stroke shortly after splitting wood at Joy Farm and died the following day at the hospital in North Conway, New Hampshire.

Then as now, Silver Lake was home to Wards, Lymans, Shackfords and Frosts. Members of these families worked for and with the Cummings family at Joy Farm, many became friends and correspondents of EE Cummings and some appear in his poetry and prose. At the time of his death, Estlin and Marion Morehouse were collaborating on a book of Marion’s photographs titled Adventures in Value. Cummings wrote the text for the book which was published after his death. Photos of Jess Shackford, Frank Lyman, and Minnie Frost are included.

There are at least three significant (that is voluminous) biographies of E.E. Cummings. There is also Susan Cheever’s more recent addition to the crowd. From these I learned and condensed the basics, set out above. And then, along comes the most wonderful, colorful and delightful Cummings biography of them all. enormous Smallness written by the poet Matthew Burgess, illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo, is a gem not just for children.

Joy Farm
enormous Smallness A story of E.E. Cummings by Matthew Burgess, Enchanted Lion Books, 2015.

For the not-so-brief biography of E.E. Cummings see any of the following:

E.E. Cummings The Magic-Maker by Charles Norman, The Boobs-Merrill Company, Inc.1958
Dreams in the Mirror A biography of E.E. Cummings by Richard S. Kennedy, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1980
E.E. Cummings a biography by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004
E.E. Cummings: A Life by Susan Cheever, Pantheon 2014

Newer posts →
Cummings at Silver Lake WeekendJuly 10, 2015
What an incredible E.E. Cummings at Silver Lake Weekend! Thanks to all who came and supported the Friends of Madison Library.

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