E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin "E. E." Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), often styled as e e cummings, as he sometimes signed his name, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays.

Cummings is associated with modernist free-form poetry. Much of his work has original syntax and uses lower case spellings for poetic expression. His use of lower case extended to rendering even the personal pronoun I as i, as in the phrase "i shall go". Cummings was politically neutral much of his life until the rise of the Cold War when he became a Republican and a supporter of Joseph McCarthy. He taught briefly at Harvard University in the 1950s, before his death in 1962.