He wrote EIMI (1933), a travelog of the Soviet Union, and delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in poetry, published as i—six nonlectures (1953).

M. L. Rosenthal wrote: The chief effect of Cummings' jugglery with syntax, grammar, and diction was to blow open otherwise trite and bathetic motifs through a dynamic rediscovery of the energies sealed up in conventional usage ...

James Dickey wrote, "I think that Cummings is a daringly original poet, with more vitality and more sheer, uncompromising talent than any other living American writer."

Dickey described himself as "ashamed and even a little guilty in picking out flaws" in Cummings's poetry, which he compared to noting "the aesthetic defects in a rose.

He attended Harvard University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society in 1915.

During these years Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa and Mexico, and he worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924–1927).

Cummings later described the crash in the following passage from his i: six nonlectures series given at Harvard (as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) in 1952 and 1953:[20][21] A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly.

When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing – dazed but erect – beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head.

These men took my sixty-six-year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him.

[25] i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes Cummings spent the last decade of his life traveling, fulfilling speaking engagements, and spending time at his summer home, Joy Farm, in Silver Lake, New Hampshire.

On a trip to Paris, Orr met and fell in love with the Irish nobleman, future politician, author, journalist, and former banker Frank MacDermot.

[37] As well as being influenced by notable modernists, including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, Cummings was particularly drawn to early imagist experiments; later, his visits to Paris exposed him to Dada and Surrealism, which was reflected in his writing style.

[39] Despite Cummings's familiarity with avant-garde styles (likely affected by the calligrams of French poet Apollinaire, according to a contemporary observation[40]), much of his work draws inspiration from traditional forms.

For example, many of his poems are sonnets, albeit described by Richard D. Cureton as "revisionary ... with scrambled rhymes and rearranged, disproportioned structures; awkwardly unpredictable metrical variation; clashing, mawkish diction; complex, wandering syntax; etc.

[42][e] While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with the Romantic tradition, critic Emily Essert asserts that Cummings's work is particularly modernist and frequently employs what linguist Irene Fairley calls "syntactic deviance".

[41] A number of Cummings's poems feature his typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page, wherein Essert asserts "feeling is first" and the work begs to "be re-read in order to be understood";[43] Cummings, also a painter, created his texts not just as literature, but as "visual objects" on the page, and used typography to "paint a picture".

Following his autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, Cummings's first published work was a collection of poems titled Tulips and Chimneys (1923).

This early work already displayed Cummings's characteristically eccentric use of grammar and punctuation, although a fair amount of the poems are written in conventional language.

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 Cummings's works often do not follow the conventional rules that generate typical English sentences, or what Fairley identifies as "ungrammar".

[44] In addition, a number of Cummings's poems feature, in part or in whole, intentional misspellings, and several incorporate phonetic spellings intended to represent particular dialects.

[48] Cummings also employs what Fairley describes as "morphological innovation", wherein he frequently creates what critic Ian Landles calls: "unusual compounds suggestive of 'a child's language'" like "'mud-luscious' and 'puddle-wonderful'".

[44][49] Literary critic R. P. Blackmur has commented that this use of language is "frequently unintelligible because [Cummings] disregards the historical accumulation of meaning in words in favor of merely private and personal associations".

[50] Fellow poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, in her equivocal letter recommending Cummings for the Guggenheim Fellowship he was awarded in 1934, expressed her frustration at his opaque symbolism.

Friedman considered these two poems to be "condensed" and "cryptic" parables, "sparsely told", in which setting the use of such "inflammatory material" was likely to meet with reader misapprehension.

After a series of events, however, Santa Claus's faith in love and his rejection of the materialism and disappointment he associates with Science are reaffirmed, and he is reunited with Woman and Child.

[59] He painted continuously, relentlessly, from childhood until his death, and left in his estate more than 1600 oils and watercolors (a figure that does not include the works he sold during his career) and over 9,000 drawings.

[59] He received substantial acclaim as an American cubist and an abstract, avant garde painter between the World Wars, but with the publication of his books The Enormous Room and Tulips and Chimneys in the 1920s, his reputation as a poet eclipsed his success as a visual artist.

[59] In 1931, he published a limited edition volume of his artwork entitled CIOPW, named for his media of charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, and watercolor.

About this same time, he began to break from Modernist aesthetics and employ a more subjective and spontaneous style;[59] his work became more representational: landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and portraits.

"[64] In 1943, modern dancer and choreographer, Jean Erdman presented "The Transformations of Medusa, Forever and Sunsmell" with a commissioned score by John Cage and a spoken text from the title poem by E. E. Cummings, sponsored by the Arts Club of Chicago.