As one of the most innovative poets of his time, Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings experimented with poetic form and language to create a distinct personal style. A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise, employing a few key words eccentrically placed on the page. Some of these words were invented by Cummings, often by combining two common words into a new synthesis.

Cummings decided to become a poet when he was still a child. Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, he wrote a poem a day, exploring many traditional poetic forms. By the time he was in Harvard in 1916, modern poetry had caught his interest. He began to write avant-garde poems in which conventional punctuation and syntax were ignored in favor of a dynamic use of language. Cummings also experimented with poems as visual objects on the page. These early efforts were included in Eight Harvard Poets, a collection of poems by members of the Harvard Poetry Society.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in)

			i carry your 		heart with me
		     (i carry it in my 	     heart)i am never w
		  ithout it(anywhere i 	    go you go,my dear;and 
		  whatever is done by o    nly me is your doing,my
		 darling) i fear no fate  (for you are my fate,my sw
		 eet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,
		 my true)and it’s you are whatever a moon has alway
		  s meant and whatever a sun will always sing is
		   you here is the deepest secret nobody knows
		    (here is the root of the root and the bud 
		      of thebud and the sky of the sky of a 
	               tree called life;which grows highe
		          r than soul can hope or mind c
		           an hide)and this is the won
		             der that's keeping the s
		               tars apart i carry yo
		                ur heart(i carry i
		                  t in my heart)