why did e.e. cummings never use capital letters?
to indicate that much of what he was saying was meant for the ears of a lover? like whispered pillow talk?
Because the shift keys were broken on his typewriter.
Heh, I crack myself up. Actually, he did use capital letters frequently–“Buffalo Bill” is capitalized, for instance. However, it’s true that he often disregarded proper capitalization and punctuation for poetic effect. Most famously, he usually rendered the first person pronoun “I” as a lowercase “i.” This is seen in many of his love poems, which suggests a humility and diminution of the self before the loved one (the second person pronoun “you” will sometimes be capitalized as “You,” just to emphasize the importance of the person who is being addressed).
So, it’s really just to express certain poetic sentiments, like lover’s talk, as Psalex suggests.
Incidentally, I used to think Cummings always used a lowercase “i” for “I,” until I saw an exhibition at the New York Public Library that showed some of his personal manuscripts. In his letters, he consistently wrote “I” with a capital “I.”
And Norman Friedman points out that Cummings distinguished between his poetic persona and his everyday identity. Therefore, the guy writing the letter uses normal capitalization, while the guy writing the poems gives himself poetic license to disregard the rules of grammar and punctuation. Friedman also makes the argument in favor of capitalizing the poet’s name–i.e., “E. E. Cummings,” and not “e. e. cummings” as is more often written (and which is how I used to write it until I read Friedman’s article).
But if you’re feeling poetic, I suppose you can capitalize it or not however you like.
He also didn’t use punctuation.
Meaning you were actually asking about ee cummings. ~grins~
I would say simply that it was his shtick. He was an artist of language. He used syntax, language, even the way he broke up his lines to convey obsure messages. It set him apart from other poets in his time.
Of course, I’m not a poetry scholar, so I may be a bit off on some of my thoughts…feel free to correct me.
~J
Yeah, essentially what Skopo said. I just also wanted to point out that he rather famously remarked (and I’m paraphrasing) that one should not attempt free verse until one has mastered more rigid forms of poetry. Free verse is supposed to be harder to do, not easier. Same deal with punctuation and capitalization. You have to know where it goes before you can forgo it.
And, yeah, Skopo, I’m firmly of the opinion that he didn’t capitalize the first person singular in order to distnguish the poetic voice from his own actual voice. Except when he didn’t 
He was an original gansta.
I like Jaade’s comment that Cummings was an “artist of language.” But I will take small exception to his other comment that Cummings didn’t use punctuation.
He didn’t use conventional punctuation - or didn’t use punctuation conventionally - but he did use it in his own way.
There are many other examples.
And for those who think that everything he wrote was like that poem, here’s proof to the contrary: