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ee cummings lowercase? He didn't nor did his grave.
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A grave error? Or the truth is dead on?
E.E. Cummings died today in 1962, but people today are still scratching their heads as to whether they should lowercase or capitalize his name.
He was a great poet, and Billy Collins' essay on Cummings is where you should go to remember why. That's good and all, but my mission is to settle whether you lowercase or uppercase his name.
The definitive answers come from Cummings' letters themselves. Most of them are capitalized, but even then some are lowercased. The guy that wrote the most about this, Norman Friedman (who wrote a book on Cummings), believes that e e should be E.E., and gives his reasons here and here.
The most interesting point in his argument is in the second section, where Norman retrieves a letter from French translator Jon Grossman and f E.E. Cummings:
As we may have mentioned, due to the kindness of D. Jon Grossman's son, Jerome, we have the complete file of Jon's correspondence with Cummings. On making a preliminary tour through these letters, we found Jon preparing a French edition of his translations of Cummings' poetry, and on 27 February 1951 he wrote to the poet: "are you E.E.Cummings, ee cummings, or what?(so far as the title page is concerned)wd u like title page all in lowercase?"
The poet replied on 1 March 1951: "E.E.Cummings, unless your printer prefers E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy svp[.]"
That seems definitive to us: may it not be tricksy!
Yet, if you type his name in correctly on amazon.com, the first book that comes up is 100 Collected Poems by e.e. cummings. Even if you google fought ee cummings vs. E.E. Cummings, the correct way loses (and yes that why I have it lowercased in the title, thanks SEO tips!). But again, "may it not be tricksy" sounds like proof that the writer doesn't want it to be lowercased.
His grave is also like any other grave. His lowercase spelling wasn't a self-perpetuated gimmick. His grave is in Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory in Jamaica Plain, Boston MA, if you don't believe me, if you think a writer would know how to doctor a picture.
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