This centennial edition of E. E. Cumming's Complete Poems, published in celebration of his birth on October 14, 1894, contains all of the poems published or designated for publication by the poet in his lifetime.
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This centennial edition of E. E. Cumming's Complete Poems, published in celebration of his birth on October 14, 1894, contains all of the poems published or designated for publication by the poet in his lifetime.
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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.
... Read more ›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).