E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 (Hardcover)

~ (Author), George James Firmage (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

At the time of his death in 1962, E. E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. He is recognized on the one hand as the author of some of the most beautiful lyric poems written in the English language, and on the other as one of the most inventive American poets of his time—in the worlds of Richard Kostelanetz, "the major American poet of the middle-twentieth-century."

About the Author

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was among the most influential, widely read, and revered modernist poets. His many awards included an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Bollingen Prize. Among his many volumes are The Enormous Room and Tulips & Chimneys.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1136 pages
• Publisher: Liveright; Revised edition (April 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871401525
• ISBN-13: 978-0871401526
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,197 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars life's not a paragraph, July 7, 2001

By	"jb541" (USA) - See all my reviews

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."

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Canonical Cummings Compendium, March 30, 2001

By	Christopher Wanko "-C" (Nutley, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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).

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "what a gently welcoming darkestness", December 15, 2001

By	Natalie Mills "purr_verse" (Reservoir, VIC, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.