Regarded as the pioneer of experimental poetry, E. E. Cummings' unconventional treatment of poetic language has reached an unprecedented acme, which has intrigued and baffled numerous scholars, researchers and readers alike. Nevertheless, the very existence of poetry, like other types of literary texts, demonstrates the significance and value of interpretation and exploration. The eccentric use of language by E. E. Cummings should be attributed to his double identity as both poet and painter. He was deeply influenced by the contemporary European visual art, especially the cubism. Most poems he composed are a perfect blend of the art of painting technique and poetry creation so that there are paintings in poetry and poetry in paintings. Among them, linguistic deviation is one of the means of realizing the foregrounding effect and achieving the aesthetic value. Based on the linguistic deviation theories of Geoffrey N. Leech and with reference to Yu Xueyong's three-dimensional model and framework, this thesis attempts to explore the achievement of foregrounding in E. E. Cummings' poetry by means of graphological, lexical and semantic deviations through analyzing eight selected poems ranging over four of Cummings' major themes namely love, life, nature and death. The attempt to analyze the stylistic features of symbolic poetry demonstrates the complementation of linguistics and literature as well as the interaction between art and aesthetics, thus providing an insightful reference to the interpretation and appreciation of poetry.