Edward Estlin (e. e.) Cummings was born in Cambridge, MA on October 14, 1894. He graduated Harvard with a B.A. in 1915 and an M.A. in 1916. He voluntarily joined an ambulance corps and went to France for World War I. He was imprisoned falsely for 3 months during the war in a camp, which gave him fuel for writing. After the war, he stayed in Paris to paint and write. He died in 1962 in Conway, NH.

Through his poetry, e. e. cummings stabbed the establishment, the abstract, the pompous society, the mechanical, the impersonal. He wrote with typographical ingenuity, showing how his presentation of words on the page could change the oral reading of the poem. The arrangement of words, syllables, and punctuation causes stress and flow that brings life to the print. The style of Cummings's poetry brings the word-processor spell check and grammar check to their knees - a blow against technology in an age before the personal computer.