The flame started first by amazement over subject matter, that flame which only a great artist can have — not the emotional pleasure of the layman — but the intuitive understanding and recognition relating obvious reality to the esoteric, must then be confined to a form within which it can burn with a focused intensity: otherwise it flares, smokes and is lost like in an open bonfire.

e. e. cummings

About e. e. cummings

Portrait of e. e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis...

More quotations from e. e. cummings