E.E. CUMMINGS: A Biography

This nimble biography of the self-proclaimed " 'small eye poet,'" who united the avant-garde with tradition in his creations, works best as the story of a man in lifelong agitation about his desires and the demands of his real life. Born in Cambridge, Mass., to an established family, his father a Harvard instructor, Edward Estlin Cummings (1894–1962) came to reject his father's piety but was consumed by the guilt his upright upbringing engendered, a condition that affected his art and his interactions with women throughout his life. Cummings's student years at Harvard and his WWI involvement are covered at length, with particular attention to the publication of his first prose work, The Enormous Room, about being incarcerated in a French prison camp. Biographer Sawyer-Lauçanno (An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles ) is especially strong in presenting Cummings's liaisons with women, particularly his two failed marriages, as stories of moral shortcomings, not the inevitabilities of youth. He offers enlightening analyses of Cummings's painting and writing, with an interesting take on the well-known "Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town." Sawyer-Lauçanno is so adept at weaving together the difficult elements of Cummings's life that it is the biographer's accomplishment, more than the poet's, that remains in the mind. Agent, Roslyn Targ. (Oct.)