i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of allnothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--"i thank You God," e. e. cummings

Sometime during junior or senior year of high school, I fell in love with e. e. cummings. I don't usually like abstract writing—and cummings can be very abstract—but at the same time, his blunt, mellow imagery was so new and refreshing. The smooth yet raw expression of his often-strange syntax can impart a transcendent feeling, something born from the inhale and exhale of sighs rather than the concise rhythm of traditional poetry. He also experimented quite a bit with the look of his poetry as well as the sound of it, and as someone who is very visually oriented, I appreciated that a lot.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings started writing poetry at the age of ten and never really stopped. He attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude with a Master's in English and Classical Studies in 1916. A year after that, he left for France and became a volunteer ambulance driver during World War I. But five months later, he was arrested on suspicion of espionage because he spoke openly of his anti-war sentiments and was sent to a prison camp in Normandy. He would later compile these experiences into an autobiographical novel called The Enormous Room.

Throughout his lifetime, cummings enjoyed great popularity for his writing and, to a lesser extent, his painting. He received a number of awards, including the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Fellowship of Academy of American Poets. Despite his commercial success, however, his personal life wasn't quite as smooth, and he ended up divorced twice before meeting Marion Morehouse, a model and photographer with whom he lived until his death in 1962. They traveled together quite often, but one of their main residences remained 4 Patchin Place, just off of E. 10th St. between 6th Ave. and Greenwich Ave. In addition to the cummings, several other writers have lived there as well, including Theodore Dreiser and Djuna Barnes.


Naturally, when I learned of it, I had to visit. I went after class one day, and it shocked me to find out that I had in fact been walking past it once a week for my entire stay here and simply never noticed.

Patchin Place is a small gated alley cul-de-sac past the shadow of the Jefferson Market Library. To this day, it remains a private residential area and is largely unchanged from what it'd looked like during cummings's day. The gate made me rather apprehensive, and for quite a while, I thought I'd only be able to take pictures from the outside, but then I realized that the side doors were actually unlocked.

Walking into the tiny neighborhood was kind of awkward. After a short look around, I found that number 4 was the very first apartment to the left. There were two plaques on the wall beside the door, which marked it as both cummings's home and an official literary landmark of New York.

As I was taking pictures, residents went along their business, coming home from classes and shopping trips or leaving to do what they needed to do. Armed with my camera, I felt a little bit like a stalker waiting outside of someone's house or something, except it was the house I was stalking, not the people within it.


I hesitated a little bit before jumping onto the front porch and jamming myself into the doorway, taking some pictures from what I imagined e. e. cummings's perspective would've been all those years ago. Everything looks almost identical, down to the metal fire escape that hangs precariously over the steps.

Patchin Place, hidden away from the busy street just outside, seemed like a fairly idyllic place to live. cummings's studio, which was at the back of the third floor, would probably have been even more tranquil. The abundance of greenery in particular made it seem an entire world apart from the grand buildings of Manhattan, and there is a relaxing atmosphere around it.

Due to the general lack of anything else I could do, I left fairly quickly afterward. The residents were probably used to tourists coming around, but it was still a private space, and I thought it would be best to keep from intruding more than I should.

If you're thinking about moving there, though, it seems like there may be some room available.





Directions:

4 Patchin Place
New York, NY 10011
F, V or L trains to 6th Ave.
1, 2, 3 trains to 14th St.
1 train to Christopher St./Sheridan Sq.
A, C, E or L trains to 14th St.-8th Ave.