Someone Lived in a Fair Town by EE Cummings EE Cummings Biography Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894. He received his bachelor's degree in 1915 and his master's degree in 1916, both by Harvard. During World War I, Cummings worked as an ambulance driver in France, but was interned in a prison camp by French authorities (an experience chronicled in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war beliefs. After the war, he settled into a life split between homes in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. In his work, Cummings radically experimented with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly distinctive means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pushing his work towards further evolution. Nonetheless he achieved great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful manner and his attention to topics such as war and sex. At the time of his death in 1962, he was the second most read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. Anyone Lived in a Nice Town by E.E. Cummings Anyone Lived in a Nice Town (with so many bells down below) spring summer fall winter sang his didn't dance his did Women and men (both young and small) cared for no one for nothing they sowed theirs is not they reaped the same sun moon stars the children of the rain guessed (but only a few and so they forgot how they grew up autumn winter spring summer) that no one loved him more when now and the tree with leaves she laughed at her joy she cried her pain the bird on the snow and tossed in the quiet someone was everything to her someone married their everyone they laughed their cries and did their dance (awake sleep hope and then) they said they had never slept in their dreams stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children tend to forget to remember with so many bells floating down) one day someone died I guess (and no one bent down to kiss his face) people busy buried them side by side little by little and was next to everyone and deep after deep and more and more they dream of their sleep no one and no one earth for April for spirit and if for yes. Women and men (both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their seed and left