E. E. Cummings and I carry your heart with me

Notes

The poem, "i carry your heart with me," by E. E. Cummings has been a favorite love poem 

and a favorite selection at weddings for many years. The poem has gained renewed 

interest since being featured in the film, "In Her Shoes." It is used with devastating effect 

in the film’s climactic wedding scene and again to close the movie. Countless fans have 

been inspired to review the touching words of "i carry your heart with me."

I carry your heart with me

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

i am never without it

(anywhere i go you go, my dear; 

and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate 

(for you are my fate, my sweet) 

i wantno world 

(for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always 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 the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; 

which grows higher than soul 

can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart 

(i carry it in my heart)

E. E. Cummings 


E. E. Cummings was born Edward Estlin Cummings in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died in North Conway, N.H., in 1962. Cummings earned a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1915 and delivered the Commencement Address that year, titled "The New Art." A year later he earned an M.A. degree for English and Classical Studies, also from Harvard.
Cummings joined an ambulance corps with the American Red Cross in France during World War I. The French imprisoned him on suspicion of disloyalty, a false accusation that put Cummings in prison for three months. He wrote the novel, The Enormous Room, about his experience. Many of Cumming’s writings have an anti-war message.
Cummings was a fine artist, playwright and novelist. He studied art in Paris following World War I and he adopted a cubist style in his artwork. He considered himself as much a painter as a poet, spending much of the day painting and much of the night writing. Cummings particularly admired the artwork of Pablo Picasso.
Cummings' understanding of presentation can be seen in his use of typography to "paint a picture" with words in some of his poems.
The E. E. Cummings Society publishes an annual journal, titled "Spring." It normally contains articles, news, event notices, and critical essays about Cummings and his works. It also includes some reproductions of Cummings’ artwork.
During his lifetime Cummings wrote over 900 poems, two novels, four plays, and had at least a half dozen showings of his artwork.