On September 8, 1924, e. e. cummings, soon to be renowned poet and writer, moved into 4 Patchin Place[1].

Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894 in Boston, Massachusetts to Edward and Rebecca Cummings[2]. At the age of three and a half, not only did he start sketching, but also started speaking his own poetry, and his mother wrote the words down. Among the first was:

Oh, my little birdie, oh, with his little toe, toe, toe!

During the spring of 1909, when he was 14, Estlin composed a poem that had elements that would later be a trademark of his style, specifically, a comma without a space after it[3].

A chilly,murkynight;

The street lamps flicker low,

A hail-like,whispering rain

Beats ‘gainst the streaked, bleak pane;

The sickly,ghostly glow

Of the blurred,blinking,unwavering,flickering light

Shines on the muddy streets in somber gleams

Like a weird lamp post on a road of dreams.

In this one poem, Cummings embodies a cat taking a tumble from wherever it was sitting. It reads almost incoherently, with various punctuations interrupting the words[4].

(IM)C-A-T(MO)

(im)c-a-t(mo)
b,i;l:e

FallleA
ps!fl
OattumblI

sh?dr

IftwhirlF
(Ul)(IY)
&&&

away wanders exact
ly;as if
not
hing had,ever happ
ene

D

Cummings may not have known it at the time, but he lived in Patchin Place for the rest of his life, visited by writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas [5].