He was named after his father but his family called him by his middle name, Estlin. His father was a professor of sociology and political science at Harvard University and later a Unitarian minister.
Cummings enrolled at Harvard University in September 1911, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915, graduating magna cum laude, and in the next year completed his Master's degree in English and Classical Studies also at Harvard
In 1917 Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend John Dos Passos. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.
Despite Cummings' consanguinity with avant-garde styles, much of his work is quite traditional. Many of his poems are sonnets, albeit often with a modern twist, and he occasionally made use of the blues form and acrostics. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world. His poems are also often rife with satire.
While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with the romantic tradition, Cummings' work universally shows a particular idiosyncrasy of syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger phrases and sentences. Many of his most striking poems do not involve any typographical or punctuation innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.
During his lifetime, Cummings published four plays:
- HIM, a three-act play, was first produced in 1928
- Tom, A Ballet is a ballet based on Uncle Tom's Cabin.
- Santa Claus: A Morality
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.
He died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at the Memorial Hospital. His cremated remains were buried in Lot 748 Althaeas Path,
