Biographer Kennedy, in his introduction, admits to this book being
a distillation of research originally planned for two volumes; much
if not all literary criticism is thus dispensed-with in favor of a
straightforward and readable bearding of Cummings' life. The son of
a well-known Boston Unitarian minister, Estlin Cummings went to
Harvard but detested Cambridge (site, ironically, of his largest
triumph - the 1952 Norton "nonlectures" in poetry), preferring
instead the Paris-Greenwich Village bohemian axis; and he never
strayed from those environs even in later years when his views
became anti-Semitic, McCarthyite, and bitterly galled. Cummings'
personal life was pretty much a shambles: first wife stolen from a
best friend (and their child only guiltily half-recognized until
she was an adult), cuckolded on a second try, and finally finding
his life's companion in the third - patient, classy, ex-model
Marion. Kennedy's book turns especially sad when he discusses
Cummings' tortured relationship with his daughter; he spots,
rightly it seems, a double vein in Cummings' personality, romantic
individualism but also the "petit garcon" with women: a shyness and
irresponsibility. But how sorely this book lacks any real
perspective on the work of the man! Was Cummings, our supreme poet
of punctuation, a truly major figure (he seemed unsure of this
himself); or was he a typographically hyperactive sentimentalist, a
Rod McKuen with Cubist pretensions carried over from his avocation
as a painter? In leaving out serious discussion of the poetry,
Kennedy keeps us attending a life that's like a story without a
middle, without a core. (Kirkus Reviews)
Along with Pound, Eliot, and Joyce, Edward Estlin Cummings is one
of the leading American poets who revolutionized literary
expression in the twentieth century. He was also a Cubist painter,
a champion of the little man, a brilliant conversationalist, a
romantic idealist, a famous irrational curmudgeon, and husband to
three of the most beautiful women of his time. This critical
biography merges these various selves into one fascinating life
story, many chapters of which could be mistaken for a great
romantic novel. In following Cummings's development as a poet, it
also includes a large number of previously unpublished poems and
drawings.
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