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[Students Last Name]1 [Students Name] [Instructors Name] [Course Title] 2 May 2012 e. e. cummings e. e.

cummings was a visual poet who wrote during the modernist movement, though, more notably, his writing genre largely focused on either documentary or satire. Throughout his life, cummings gained respectability as a painter, praised the works of the cubists and contemporary classical musicians, and sought to upset the predictability of the printed page and the expectations of the conventional reader (Bertha 2118). On a stylistic level, he experimented with the physical aesthetics of his writing, heavily influenced by his gifts and appreciation for the visual and fine arts. His style, like many of the other modernist artists, questioned traditional forms of writing; this was probably an expression of disillusionment from his first hand experiences as an ambulance driver in WWI. He was especially scornful towards political propaganda and intolerance, and often satirically criticized the US government and ultraconservatism during both post war eras. However, e. e. cummings also strove to document life on a microscopic and macroscopic scale, with subjects ranging from grasshoppers to the changing sexual culture of the mid-twentieth century. During the 1950s American society transitioned into a largely homogenized, suburban culture, which basically imposed conformity and submission to authority. In his poem, old age sticks e. e. cummings exposes the rising dichotomies between an older, conservative generation that experienced the Great Depression and World Wars and the younger, rebellious community including the Beat generation that embraced sexual freedom, drug use, and rock-and-role to seek to defy conformity. However, in his poem, cummings points out a key fact that this young generation will eventually become the old generation, asserting the fact that these dichotomies have existed and will continue to exist, as illustrated by the flapper girls of the Jazz age, the hippies of the 60s, and even the hipsters of today.

[Students Last Name]2 e. e. cummings works have had considerable immediate impacts, especially on the styles and subject matters of other modernist artists. Similar themes of satire and protest exist in the writing of many Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg. His visual, vivid, and aesthetic style also heavily influenced other visual poets, and the style eventually developed into poetry known as concrete poetry. Most importantly however, his works and ideas raised the ever-present questions on the meaning of poetry that is still being debated today: Is something cannot be read aloud a poem? If so, what do we mean by the word poem? Can a poem incorporate slang, obscenity, advertising jargon, dialect? Is all language material for poetry? Must the line be the unit of the poem? Does the eye have as much right to the poem as the ear? Is the sonnet dead or can it be resuscitated? Can satiric lyrics be written in puritanical America?.

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