The Coming Age and Other Poems: Third Edition

"I believe in the dream of the people who defied the foreign King who claimed to

rule them and, in the Government, set in place by the Continental Congress in 1787 avowing ourselves responsible first to God to have such rights given to us by the Almighty and not by any supposed government as We the People are the first and only legal government as a whole."

-James William Cummings

Autobiography: James William Cummings was born in Bangor General Hospital on March 9, 1960. He was raised in Dixmont, Maine, a small rural community. They raised a variety of animals including cows, ponies, pigs, chickens, rabbits and goats throughout his childhood and early adulthood. He went to McKinley one room schoolhouse and attended elementary in the towns of Dixmont and Etna. James then went to Newport area Nokomis Regional High School in 1974 and graduated in 1978. He had visited the University library in Orono a few times and in 1979 he worked for Cianbro Corporation in Pittsfield. It was apparent that he was epileptic, he stayed at home for 8 years then started working at Stinson Seafood Company in Belfast, Maine in 1987 until 2001 when the plant closed.

He began sending poetry to the Republican Journal and the Waldo Independent (both Belfast, Maine newspapers) in January 1989, and later that year he joined the World of Poetry group and had poetry published in several of their anthologies. He was approached by the International Society of Poets, which later expanded on the internet as Poetry.com and been entering poems in Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum's contests and sent a couple of poems for the United Nations Poets for Peace. Several of his coworkers had loved his work, something that any poet would cherish. Some of our elected officials, as well as three presidents, have shown their gratitude to him.

For a time, he was a member of the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Genealogical Society, the New England Historical Genealogical Society, the family societies Isaac Cummings Family Association and Delano Kindred (both of which he was a descendant member of). After the Stinson Seafood company closed in 2001, he went to work for the Little River Apparel Company in Belfast, Maine.