“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”

The lyric poem “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” was written by American Modernist poet E. E. Cummings (1894-1962). The poem, based on the sonnet form, details the devotion of the speaker for their beloved, and situates the romance as an epic love story. It was first published in 1952 in Poetry Magazine in a set of five poems, and later in 95 Poems (1958), Cummings’s penultimate collection.

“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” was written late in Cummings’s career, while he was enjoying newfound popularity among the American public. At this time, Cummings was in a committed relationship with his third wife, Marion Morehead, and had just reunited with his long neglected daughter, Nancy. The poem can be read as a tribute to spiritual, romantic, and/or parental love. It is marked by Cummings’s signature experimental style, which combines innovative syntax and punctuation with the pastoral elements of Romantic poetry. This poem is among Cummings’s most well-loved and often appears on lists of Valentine’s Day poems, is a popular reading for weddings, and is recited often in film and advertisements.

Poet Biography

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, to former Harvard professor turned Calvinist minister Edward Cummings and his wife, Rebecca Haswell Cummings. Cummings’s parents supported his creative endeavors, including his love of writing poetry and drawing. He began writing poems at the age of eight and wrote a poem daily until 1916.

Cummings graduated from Harvard with honors in 1915, continuing on for his master’s degree. In 1917, his first published work appeared in Eight Harvard Poets, early poems that already featured his signature use of style and syntax. At Harvard, he also befriended future novelist John Dos Passos, with whom he volunteered in 1916 to serve in World War I as part of the French ambulance corps. Cummings used his experience of being detained as a prisoner and possible spy to write The Enormous Room (1922), a significant novel for postwar America.

After the war, Cummings returned to Paris to study art. He began a love affair with Elaine Orr. When Elaine became pregnant with Cummings’s daughter, Nancy, they married. However, after two months of marriage, Orr fell in love with nobleman Frank MacDermot and ran away to Ireland, taking Nancy with her. She and MacDermot blocked Cummings from visiting Nancy, who grew up not knowing Cummings was her father. Cummings then married Anne Minnerly Barton in 1929, but the couple was divorced by 1932.

While his personal life was tumultuous, the poet received positive critical attention. The 1920s and ’30s saw the publication of several collections of poetry. Cummings also won the first Dial Award and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. During this time, Cummings worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine, traveling to Europe, the Soviet Union, North Africa, and Mexico. Through his work, he met photographer and model Marion Morehouse, with whom he began a long-term relationship.

50 Poems (1940) and 1 x 1 (1944) were published in the World War II–era. In 1946, Cummings painted a portrait of his biological daughter, Nancy, who had married a descendent of President Theodore Roosevelt. When he confessed that he was her biological father, their reunion lead to Cummings writing the play Santa Claus (1946), a fantasy about healing and resurrection.

By the 1950s, due to his distinct style, Cummings was one of America’s most popular poets, second only to Robert Frost. Cummings received a fellowship from the American Academy of Poets, another Guggenheim, the prestigious Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard.

Cummings died of a stroke in 1962. In his lifetime, he wrote 2,900 poems, created 1,600 paintings in oils and watercolors, and made over 9,000 drawings. His art is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum, and his poetry remains popular and recognizable even today.

Poem text

Cummings, E. E. “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in].” 1952. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The speaker imagines that they possess the love of their beloved, keeping it with them at all times within their own consciousness or body. They believe that the object of their affection is the reason for their ability to function and that the two remain connected together, even when physically separated. They do not worry about future plans because they have all they need within the realm of the other person. The speaker compares their love to the constancy and beauty of natural forces, such as the pull of the moon and the rising of the sun. This centering quality of love leads to the “deepest secret” (Line 10)—or the key to life. Love is, according to the speaker, the basis for everything that grows and all that is holy. The speaker attests that love fills them with awe and that this is what keeps the speaker’s world from imploding. The speaker ends by reiterating that they keep the beloved with them at all times.