[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

Linguistic Rebel

It's hard to come up with a better label for Cummings than "linguistic rebel." The guy's a rock star for literary geeks as he thumbs his nose at linguists and English teachers all over the globe. We bet there are even a few Shmoopers with photos of our man pinned to their walls. He's just that cool.

If you come across another Cummings poem you'll likely see a lot of purposely misused lowercase spellings, parentheses, lines starting all the way out in right field, and some wild syntax to boot. Plus you'll probably have the added bonus of having lots of that "it is, but it isn't" idea going on.

Take a look at some of these Cummings classics that showcase his zany (but precise) world of modern poetry: here and here.