Discussed in this essay:

E. E. Cummings: A Life, by Susan Cheever. Pantheon Books. 240 pages. $26.95.

E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904–1962, edited by George James Firmage. Liveright. 1,136 pages. $50.

I cannot be the only member of my generation who was introduced to E. E. Cummings by Woody Allen. The poet has a cameo in Hannah and Her Sisters, when Elliot, the buttoned-up British businessman played by Michael Caine, is attempting to woo Lee (Barbara Hershey), the most bohemian and romantic of the characters — and the sister of his wife. Running into her accidentally-on-purpose on the gritty SoHo block…