Unconventional in every way, Edward Estlin Cummings made striking use of grammar. His arts were poetry, painting, and drama, and in all of them he was an experimenter. The poetry -- for which he is best remembered -- was marked by strange combinations of words and expressions and produced in very strange print. The unusual techniques that Cummings used served to present his ideas more forcefully and effectively than would have been the case with more ordinary styles.               Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 14, 1894. He graduated from Harvard College in 1915 and received a master's degree in 1916. During World War I he served as an ambulance driver in France. He spent six months in prison because of his friendship with another American who had supposedly criticized the countries that fought against Germany in the First World War. This experience increased his distrust of all officialdom  , a distrust that showed itself in many of his later poems as well as in his first book, "The Enormous Room", published in 1922.               Between the two world wars Cummings divided his time between Paris and New York City. His first book of poetry was "Tulips and Chimneys" (1923). The poems in the book were collected in "Complete Poems" (1968). The strangeness of his style was criticized by some, but others found it meaningful.               Among Cummings' plays were "Him", first performed in 1927, and "Tom" (1935), a work based on "Uncle Tom's Cabin". An experimental prose   book, "Eimi" (1933), recorded a 36-day visit to the Soviet Union.               Cummings died at his home in North Conway, N.H., on Sept. 3, 1962. He was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. Cummings was chiefly famous as   _  .
a poet an artist a novelist a playwright