The author begins his “nonlectures” with the warning “I haven’t the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer.” Then, at intervals, he proceeds to deliver the following:

1. i & my parents
2. i & their son
3. i & selfdiscovery
4. i & you & is
5. i & now & him
6. i & am & santa claus

These talks contain selections from the poetry of Wordsworth, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, and others, including e. e. cummings. Together, it forms a good introduction to the work of e. e. cummings.

Six marvelously unconventional lectures… An aesthetic self-portrait and a definition of Mr. Cummings’s ‘stance’ as a writer. Full of originality, high spirits, and aphoristic dicta, they express a credo of intense individualism. * The Atlantic *
E. E. Cummings has given so much delight over the years—by his poetry, his painting, and his personality—that a deeply serious side of him, that of the dedicated man, has been overlooked… i: six nonlectures should help to bring him into sharper focus; [it is] the autobiography of a man who, through all the strange deviations of a strange age, has remained true to himself—one, moreover, so completely creative that even his lectures, which he calls ‘nonlectures,’ offer new esthetic experiences… Seldom, indeed, has the subject of the creator and the creative faculty been so frankly and inspiringly present. * Saturday Review *
In flashes of the nonlecturing, and steadily in the readings, the always surprising freshness, the durability, the high-spirited and deep-rooted resources of E. E. Cummings’ work are made apparent to us once more. For this sufficient reason, i is a blessing. * New England Quarterly *
What a book, what a poet, what a man, what a patriot, what a proud nation he is the first (and only?) citizen of—no, he didn’t discover New Jersey, nuclear fission, or nucoa, just himself. -- William Saroyan * The Nation *

Poet and painter e. e. cummings was the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at Harvard University for 1952–1953.