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PhotographyI have always wanted to know what the true background of non-capitalizing “ee cummings” is – the usual story is that “he preferred it like that”.
It turns out, the internet (all hail!) doesn’t help, for once.
Cummings’s publishers and others have sometimes echoed the unconventional orthography in his poetry by writing his name in lowercase and without periods, but usual orthography (uppercase and periods) is supported by scholarship, preferred by publishers today. Cummings himself used both the lowercase and capitalized versions, though he most often signed his name with capitals.
The use of lowercase for his initials was popularized in part by the title of some books, particularly in the 1960s, writing his name in lower case on the cover and spine. In the preface to E. E. Cummings: the growth of a writer critic Harry T. Moore notes ” He [Cummings] had his name put legally into lower case, and in his later books the titles and his name were always in lower case.” According to his widow, this is incorrect, She wrote of Friedman “you should not have allowed H. Moore to make such a stupid & childish statement about Cummings & his signature.” On 27 February 1951, Cummings wrote to his French translator D. Jon Grossman that he preferred the use of upper case for the particular edition they were working on. One Cummings scholar believes that on the rare occasions that Cummings signed his name in all lowercase, he may have intended it as a gesture of humility, not as an indication that it was the preferred orthography for others to use.
Critic Edmund Wilson commented “Mr. Cummings’s eccentric punctuation is, also, I believe, a symptom of his immaturity as an artist. It is not merely a question of an unconventional usage: unconventional punctuation may very well gain its effect… the really serious case against Mr. Cummings’s punctuation is that the results which it yields are ugly. His poems on the page are hideous.”
