birthday boy ee cummings goes to moscow

You would be 107 today, had you not died. Let's celebrate with Carla Blumenkranz excellent essay about your trip to Russia, from our archives:

It seems possible that Cummings went to Russia, in the early years of Stalinism, precisely to feel alive again in another, more enormous room. He had spent the decade since his first book becoming a prominent avant-garde poet and acquiring the requisite lifestyle. As the author of a renowned war memoir (and with the help of Dos Passos), Cummings had sold a collection of his idiosyncratic poems to the same publisher. Tulips & Chimneys (1923) was quickly followed by four more collections and one play within the next eight years. During this time Cummings also married twice, shuttled between New York and Paris, and, in 1931, took leave of his wife and daughter and set out for Moscow . . .