Copyright © 2014 by Susan Cheever
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Liveright Publishing Corporation for permission to reprint the following: “annie died the other day”, “All in green went my love riding”, “Buffalo Bill’s”, “crazy jay blue)”, “Christ but they’re few”, “I sing of Olaf glad and big”, “I thank You God for most this amazing”, “if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have”, “in Just-”, “Jehovah buried, Satan dead,”, “kumrads die because they’re told)”, “let it go—the”, “love’s function is to fabricate unknowness”, “may I feel said he”, “may my heart always be open to little”, “Me up at does”, “my father moved through dooms of love”, “old age sticks”, “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls”, “this is the garden: colours come and go,”, “the boys I mean are not refined”, “when serpents bargain for the night to squirm”; excerpts from “Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost”, “Listen, you morons great and small” from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Copyright © 1923, 1925, 1926, 1931, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1973, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1991 by George James Firmage. Excerpts from Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings edited by F. W. Dupee and George Stade. Copyright © 1969 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Excerpts from The Enormous Room, A Typescript Edition with drawings by the Author, by E. E. Cummings, edited by George James Firmage. Copyright © 1978 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1978 by George James Firmage. Excerpts from Eimi by E. E. Cummings. Copyright © 1933, 1961 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Excerpts from I: Six Nonlectures by E. E. Cummings. Copyright © 1953, 1981 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Excerpts from Diary by E. E. Cummings. Copyright © by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Reprinted by permission of the Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cheever, Susan.
E. E. Cummings : a life / Susan Cheever.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-307-37997-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-307-90867-4 (eBook)
1. Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin), 1894–1962. 2. Poets, American—
20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS3505.U334Z565 2013 811′.52—dc23 [B] 2013004225
Front-of-jacket photograph by J. Sibley Watson, c. 1930s.
Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 1892.11 (93)
Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund
v3.1