Customer Reviews

E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 (Revised, Corrected, and Expanded Edition)

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My story begins with my high school English teacher assigning us to read "since feeling is first".

We studied that poem for an entire week. It's not a long poem, so we really dug our hands in, studying every piece of punctuation, every line break, and discovering things we didn't know could be discovered in writing. By the time we were through, I knew I couldn't stop. This is what poetry could be. I couldn't believe it. For a little while, I practiced writing my name in all lower-case. And while I knew I couldn't be cummings, I knew I still wanted to hang out with him and maybe be his friend.

To me, the whole point of e.e. cummings' works is to show how throwing logic and syntax out the window can help one rediscover how to truly capture an emotion -- and not just capture it, but to interrogate it and become either its best friend or its arch rival. There is not one word in any of cummings' works that does not have a reason to be there. His lack of cohesion is sometimes confusing. But at the same time, it charms you; and while you do feel the need to read and re-read each poem, you don't do it to analyze it - you do it because it elicits a different response each time you do. cummings hangs on just the right word, even the right letter in a word, and you know how you feel at that exact moment.

cummings looks not only at the definition of a word but the shape of the word to impact his meaning. This makes his style so intense and so pure that, in my mind, no other has come close to duplicating it.

cummings will never be the world's favorite poet, he will never be studied and understood and appreciated the way Yeats, Poe, Frost, Whitman, or any other of the "greats" will. Fine. I think if you can pick up this book and read one poem and set the book down and never read it again, you'll learn more about yourself, humanity, and about what poetry should be than if you spent days laboring over the "greats".

It's been a long while since I left high school, and now I have lots of favorite cummings poems; so many that pages are missing and entire poems are feared lost. So here I am. And then I thought, my God! There are people out there who don't know what this is, that don't know what these words can do to you. So I just wanted to pass along my little story. I need to thank that teacher. I don't think there is a better lesson than "life's not a paragraph / and death, i think, is no parenthesis."

I have a few E.E. Cummings books of poetry, but quickly despaired of every finding them all. This collection is a terrific resource for someone who simply wishes to have all the poems collected in one volume.

Typography was preserved very well (with Cummings this is critical), and I find the order of appearance by date helpful in charting his growth as a poet; the first few poems are radically different from the later ones.

Of course, acquiring his individual issues has its own appeal, but if you simply want to have his work easily at hand, this is your only choice (the indexing at the back is extrememly good at helping you remember a poem by its first lines).

ee cummings is a magnificent poet - almost as much of a visual artist as writer. His poems fall and flow and jump and dance, their patterns and punctuation adding so much more to the words and essence of meaning. I have tried reading cummings' work aloud: it never quite works. He has an exceptional turn of phrase, and with one line (give or take a pattern or two) can bring about powerful emotive responses.
This book is fantastic - I had quite a lot of difficulty finding collections of his poetry, and although I'd found a couple of small volumes, this one was exhaustive. I reread it - or at least parts thereof - more often than any other poetry book I own, and always seem to discover another nuance or aspect or pattern that I hadn't seen before. cummings wraps you in words, and the best way I can think of to describe how I feel after reading his works is to steal a quote from one of his poems - "such strangeness as was mine a little while."
Worldwords. And he is the creator of my favourite quotation of all time...
"listen:
there's a hell of a good universe next door:
let's go."
And there is.

i first heard of e.e. cummings last year at a poetry conference. someone had written this profound poem and told me that his main influence was e.e. cummings, someone i had never read. i checked out one of his books from my school library and was addicted from then on. his style is incredible, his imagery is so marvelous, and his writing is all-together great. the way he used words to paint a gorgeous image has never been matched, and most likely never will. he is one of the most expressive poets ive ever read. some of his work is touching, some hilarious, some full of passion. amazing is the only word i can think of to describe him.

Like E.E. Cummings? This massive book has every single poem he ever released (not to mention a few hundred that weren't). If you aren't satisfied with buying the individual books, just pay the thirty-somewhat dollars and get every book anthologized in entierety.
A neat feature is not only the arrangment of poems by book release, but also, in the back, an index of all the first lines of all the poems alphabatized and labeled with the respective page number.
It's the complete collection. Spend the extra 20 bucks and get this instead of just 1 book of poems. Your mind will thank you dearly.

The compilation of all the works was extensive and covered every area to my knowledge. There was no cramming of poems, the spacing and overall presentation of individual prose was well done. The only defects occur when compared with the book of cummings works by Richard S. Kennedy which included works of art by cummings and grouped poems by theme, rather than publishing date. The same format would make Liverwright's an easier reference book, but overall it provides everything it promises.

e.e. cummings is a master of the English language. The way he uses words to paint a picture will leave you breathless and touch your heart. These are not poems to be read lightly...you will need to think about what has been written and how, but I think that each poem in its own way will reflect a part of your own life once you figure out exactly what is being said. His combinations of words are unique and beautiful and create a melody of poetry that you will fall in love with. "rain fell(as it will in spring) ropes of silver gliding from sunny thunder into freshness as if god's flowers were pulling upon bells of gold" How could you not want to read this?

Though i would automatically attribute 5 stars to Mr. Cummings collection of the most beautiful words collaborated onto paper in one grouping, i find that the editor in this particular volume lacked the sensibility to categorize Cummings' poetry according to both first *and* last lines, understanding that it is within the last lines that Cummings packs the most emotional weight in his "story telling" verse: "you are my sun, my moon and all my stars," "it's always ourselves we find in the sea," "not even the rain, has such small hands," "brought all of her to a dead stand Still" (among others).

It is nice to see his progression of publishing (though the order is not according to when the pieces were written and it seems to me the editor took the easiest way out on this one by ordering it according to each book). While the sections into which Kennedy (see reference in an above review) sorted these fine works was comfortable for those who wanted ease of theme, it would have been a rather magnanamous task for his vast array of published poetry. While often simplistic, the topics of Cummings' concepts can get too complex to fit into neatly fitted packages tied with the bows of universal theme. And while Kennedy was my introduction to more of this man's great work and i grew to love Cummings through him, i found myself liking works that weren't included in Kennedy's collection, and disliking his more experimental works that lacked the emotional punch (and those linguists might feel the contrary). It is cheaper, in the long run, to buy this collection than to collect the many individual publications to get all one's favorites.

For those unfamiliar with Cummings' poetry, (and i am sure there are few if any that would bother looking up poetry who are) i recommend any reading simply because this man has got it goin' on. He is a passionate lover of life and language. He is a dreamer, an innovator, and quietly seduces your understanding. The true emotion of his work comes not from the meaning of the words, but in the spaces between the letters, the way they slip from the tongue like kisses; The sounds of intense breaths between lines and breaks. And then the words come, and the poem is done, and you are compelled to read again, to learn again, to find yourself again.

Simply put, a book i can read each night like "Illusions" by Richard Bach suggests: i take the book, plop it onto the bed, and read the page onto which it falls (often more than once, simply to feel its full force of intensity).

The reason you are reading this review is that you considering buying this book. I can only recommend it if you already know how to read poetry at a minimum and, ideally, if you already are familiar with Edward Estlin Cumming's poetic style (he did not like to be written of as e e cummings). It is a tome at over 1000 pages of text and is not something you can easily take to bed at night for light reading. Each of these poems requires careful study if you are to appreciate them fully, yet such study brings deep rewards, because almost all of his poems bring wonderful insight into what it means to be human. Cummings wrote, as Richard Kennedy well explained in his biography, three kinds of poems. My favorite kind are those that are very romantic, often sonnets. Some of them are erotic but all of them are lovely. Another kind of poetry is satirical, sarcastically critical of modern institutions, arrogant people, and foolishness of all sorts. A third kind of poem is almost an expressionist painting. They are almost like word puzzles with the syntax scrambled, words divided, punctuation marks in odd places. If you're reading this, though, you are familiar with examples of each of these types. This volume gives you a chance to see all of his work. They are roughly in chronological order, but a number of poems not to be found in any other volumes and some experimental work are placed at the end. The order is not that important, because it is hard to see how he developed as a poet over his career. Some of his earliest works seem very modern and some of his last seem almost Victorian (not that he would ever be mistaken for a Victorian). Get this book if you plan to spend a lifetime carefully reading it. If you are simply interested in reading some of his work, it would be better to find his work on the internet or buy one his smaller books.

'anybody lived in a pretty how town
with up so floating many bells down'

The poetry of ee cummings is something that most Americans gain exposure to during secondary school (and very rarely in the education of those outside America) -- he is often seen as an acceptable example of one who broke the rules -- rules, the teacher will often hasten to add, which must be mastered before they can be acceptably broken.

Yet this is not what ee cummings would hope had come of his legacy. In reading his poetry in this edition, his prose, his theatrical writings, and his unpublished manuscripts (some of which have been published under the title Etc.), a new vision begins to emerge of a real maverick--not someone who wanted to break the rules, but someone who eschewed the idea of rules so completely that breaking them was beyond the question, for that would have to recognise the value of the rules.

And yet, some rules creep in:

'the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)'

This is a classic example of a cummings sonnet--adhering to rhyme and meter, yet very original.

Or, perhaps not that original. Unfortunately, ee cummings has become a conventional unconventionality. He was a success at being different--at one point only cummings and Frost, New Englanders both, with very different vines growing on the respective sides of their fence, were able to make a living solely from their writing while concentrating on poetry.

This text contains the entirety of the 12 published volumes of poetry cummings produced in his lifetime. In this we find his faith, his politics, his social criticism and his social prejudices, and his ideas of love and desire.

Some of his poetry is best meant to be read aloud, as all good poetry ultimately finds its best expression not on the lifeless page but in the spirited, feeling telling. There is an incredible sense (try reading it aloud, slowly).

Some of the cummings poetry, however, is simplicity and verges on the concrete. These sometimes resort to cleverness that might have been genius of observation at the time but unfortunately due to overexposure now just seem an elementary type of cleverness. Of course, simplicity is so often overlooked, that when it is seen, we often react not as we should.

Arrangement on the page is so critical to cummings perception of how things must be that the lastest editions of his poetry are put in typewriter typeset (the way he composed and envisioned his poetry). The medium is part of the message, he would have said.

Try to read cummings with a new eye, and look for that which would have been shocking to the more standard and rule-bound Cambridge soul.