E. E. Cummings (1894-1962), American poet, who was one of the most radically experimental and inventive writers of the 20th century. A distinctive feature of Cummings's poetry is the abandonment of uppercase letters.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Edward Estlin Cummings was educated at Harvard University. During World War I (1914-1918) he was an ambulance driver in France, ultimately spending three months in a French military detention camp on a false charge. The experience served as the basis for the autobiographical prose work The Enormous Room (1922). After World War I Cummings studied art in Paris. His first volume of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys, appeared in 1923. During the 1920s and 1930s he lived alternately in France and in the United States, finally settling in New York City.

Cummings's poetic style is characterized by typographical nonconformity; distortions of syntax; unusual punctuation; new words; and a liberal use of jazz rhythms, elements of popular culture, and slang. Because of his style, Cummings's poetry appears complex to the eye, but the ideas expressed through the words and punctuation are often simple. Although the emotional content of his poetry appears at first glance to be cynical, it is basically lyrical and almost romantic, often speaking of the value of love. Cummings followed in the Emersonian tradition (see Ralph Waldo Emerson) of individuality and rejection of conformity.

Cummings's works include XLI Poems (1925); him (1927), a play in verse and prose; CIOPW (1931), a collection of drawings and paintings taking its title from the initial letters of the materials used—charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, and watercolor; Eimi (1933), a travel diary dealing with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Collected Poems (1938); i: six nonlectures (1953); Poems, 1923-1954 (1954); 95 Poems (1958); and Complete Poems, 1904-1962 (published posthumously 1991).