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73 Poems
Four months after Cummings's death in September 1962, his widow, the photographer Marion Morehouse, collected the typescripts of 29 new poems. These poems, as well as uncollected poems published only in periodicals up to that time, make up 73 Poems. This is the final volume in Liveright's reissue of Cummings's individual volumes of poetry, with texts and settings based on E. E. Cummings: The Complete Poems 1904-1962.
80 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
E.E. Cummings
369 books3,950 followersEdward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
May 6, 2012
who
wouldn
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love a boo
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of e.e. c
ummings'
poe
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ummings'
poe
ms
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February 24, 2017
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December 4, 2017
Such an amazing poet. Not all of his poems are understood but those that are, well they are beautiful.
One of my favorite poems
33
christ but they're few
all(beyond win or lose) good true
beautiful things
god how he sings
the robin(who'll be silent in a moon or two)
and then this one
52
who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window;at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
One of my favorite poems
33
christ but they're few
all(beyond win or lose) good true
beautiful things
god how he sings
the robin(who'll be silent in a moon or two)
and then this one
52
who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window;at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
May 5, 2010
it' s
not
really
about
the layout
is it?
August 6, 2015
I was actually a little disappointed by this. I didn't really understand a lot of the poems, and I definitely acknowledge that it is in due to my lack of study or time spent with the poems. I've learned by experience that something that appears to be over my head or of little worth is completely flipped if I spend time with it or someone teaches me where and how to read a work of art (be that a book, poem, movie, painting, etc). His poems are interesting and I did like the ones that had fun sounds--they were fun to listen to if I read them aloud. Here are two that caught my attention most profoundly though:
34:
"nothing" the unjust man complained
"is just" ("or un-" the just rejoined
42:
n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
SteR
y
of
s
tilLnes
s
I liked the first one because it's so true--when we feel one way it is very hard to see it any other way. The just see it only as just, the unjust only as unjust. How can I combat that within myself?
The second one is fun--stillness as a mystery. That alone is intriguing, but the way the poem is set up with capitalization errors and the deconstruction of words makes the whole poem a mystery--and not a still one at that.
34:
"nothing" the unjust man complained
"is just" ("or un-" the just rejoined
42:
n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
SteR
y
of
s
tilLnes
s
I liked the first one because it's so true--when we feel one way it is very hard to see it any other way. The just see it only as just, the unjust only as unjust. How can I combat that within myself?
The second one is fun--stillness as a mystery. That alone is intriguing, but the way the poem is set up with capitalization errors and the deconstruction of words makes the whole poem a mystery--and not a still one at that.
October 18, 2021
Part of a 2020 Pandemic Project: using poets' repetitions to make something i'm now calling repoesy.
December 23, 2021
To me, poetry is a literary medium that can be as melodic as a song and, at the same time, be as plot-driven as a novel. However, it would be incorrect to categorise poetry as a “compromise” between a song and a novel, or a “lesser-art form”. Instead, I would argue that by virtue of its broad scope, poetry stands to be a unique art form in itself. This broadness in scope nevertheless does inevitably invite internal conflict and tension among the various literary devices that can be used in this art form, some of which at face value seeks to achieve opposing or different purposes. And it is none other than Edward Estlin Cummings’s (E. E. Cummings) poetry that exemplifies such alluring quality in the poetry world.
I was recently introduced to E.E. Cummings’s poetry when I came upon a video that sought to analyse his famous poem “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in”. What caught my attention in the first place was Cummings’s poetry reading (the video played an audio recording of Cummings reading the poem). I was captivated not only by his slow and soothing voice, but also by how articulate and confident he was with his pronunciation, even when the poem had clearly defied conventional grammar and “logic”. Furthermore, I was enthralled by his use of parentheses as a way to convey the theme of containment. Following this discovery, I went on a hunt for E.E. Cummings’s poetry and stumbled upon “as freedom is a breakfast food” in which I once again fell in love, but this time, with his use of juxtaposition, pairing seemingly unrelated subjects together to demonstrate the dualism and mutability of life and everything around it.
Long story short, I finally ended up purchasing “73 Poems”, which was the only available E.E. Cummings poetry book available in store. These 73 poems were published after his death in 1962 and I think it is fair to say that, despite them being unpublished while he was alive, some of his finest works are included in this collection. In particular, there are 12 poems that I want would like to single out as my favourites in this collection:
I will not dwell on why I enjoy these 12 poems specifically because I want to take this opportunity to reflect on E.E. Cummings’s poetry as a whole, that is, his writing style and poetic choices in general.
POEMPICTURE
To begin, it is clear that E.E. Cummings is a modernist. As Webster noted, Cummings’s aesthetics was formed in the early period of modernism between 1912-16, of imagism and the 1913 Armory Show. The artistic pursuit of the day was art as representing individual autonomy and expression, and most importantly, art that challenges 19th-century conventions and formulae. Accordingly, with this philosophy, Cummings set out to write poems that defied literary conventions, most predominately with the use of irregular line-arrangements, rhetorical capitalizations, rhetorical punctuations and unique word-forming. What this resulted in is something that Cummings called “poempictures”:
VISUAL vs. ACOUSTIC
Indeed, as you would expect with any innovation, some people have been critical of Cummings's poempictures, and arguably it is not unjustified. R.P. Blackmur, for example, called Cummings's poetic choices "typographical peculiarities" and even went as far as saying that “to write a poetry in symbols which have no audible equivalents – a mere eye poetry –” is to commit “the sin against the Holy Ghost". Blackmur's rationale is based on the principle (his principle) that the poem "only takes wing on the page [but] persists in the ear". Now, this is not an unreasonable criticism because as Webster noted, "almost every poem Cummings wrote, including his sonnets, features some non-readable-aloud iconicity". Similarly, in trying to understand Cummings's frequent and creative use of parentheses, Tartakovsky stated, "parentheses are first and foremost signs of written language and do not have a necessary one-to-one vocal correspondent".
Therefore, what we have here is an undeniable tension within Cummings's poetry: visual vs. acoustic. Can poetry be something that can only be seen but not spoken? Can what my "eyes" and "mind" read differ from what my "mouth" reads? How do you read punctuation and space and arrangement and capitalisation? To push it even further, am I corrupting the integrity of E.E. Cummings's poempictures by reading it aloud?
SEEN, NOT HEARD
Cummings wrote:
I am not sure whether I am completely satisfied that Cummings's statement answers my questions above, but it certainly provides us with the notion that his visual emphasis is a conscious and meaningful poetic decision. Heusser for example believed that Cummings's wanted reading to become "an experience that transcends the visual as well as the linguistic aspects of language, to become an ‘aesthetic’ experience".
Interestingly, there are some audio recordings of Cummings reading some of his "inaudible" poempictures, which in my opinion, despite his slow and soothing voice, does sound rather unnatural. Nevertheless, it can be read aloud if one desires to do so - whether that corrupts the integrity of the poem as noted above, or neglects a significant component of the poem, will ultiamtely depend on the poem itself and the perspective of the reader him/herself.
It is also worth noting that although most visual poetic devices that Cummings uses are generally inaudible, Cureton has, for instance, identified that some actual provide acoustic cues for how the poem should be read aloud; Cureton calls them "visual voice".
MEANING
Overall, despite all the typographical oddities in Cummings's poetry, all of his poems hold meaning. As Heusser noted, Cummings is a modernist, not an abstract expressionist. Heuseer said, "Cummings wants the reader to be able to find a meaning in his poetry, even if that sense-finding is occasionally coupled with a considerable effort on the reader’s part". Accordingly, he curiously noted that "the problem is caused less by a scarcity than an overabundance of conceivable explanations". Thus, I think he is justified by claiming that "for all the deviations that Cummings’s typography contains it is still remarkably conventional".
Indeed, Cummings still uses words' inherent meaning to construct his poems and to communicate his message. In general his poems advocate for individual autonomy and expression by highlighting the possibilities of life, love and nature. It is also interesting to note that he is pretty consistent with word choice or poetic structure when it comes to conveying his message. For example, he loves to use the words "illimatable", "spring" and "dream", which in "73 peoms" alone, these words can be found in several poems. He also loves to juxtapose opposing or seemingly irrelevant ideas, like for instance comparing "freedom" to "breakfast food", juxtaposing "seventy" and "young" and pairing "foolish" and "wise" together. In fact, I would argue that this message of dualism and use of creative metaphors epitomises Cummings's unique writing style and message.
All in all, I am very fortunate to have encountered E.E. Cummings and his poems and to have at hand a small collection of his enormous poetry work - "73 Poems". What I have ruminated above is only a very uneducated attempt to tease out of some of my own thoughts and feelings about Cummings's poetry. I hope my (hopefully comprehensible) reflections have inspired you to reconsider your thoughts about Cummings and to reread ((not) aloud) his poems. I'll end with one of my favourite stanzas in "73 peoms" - its from the poem "now does our world descend":
Sources & Further Reading:
Heusser, M 1995, 'The visual rhetoric of e. e. cummings's ‘poempictures’', Word & Image, vol. 11, no.1, pp. 16-30.
Mills Jr, R J 1959, 'The Poetry of Innocence: Notes on E. E. Cummings', The English Journal, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 433-442.
Tartakovsky, R 2009, 'E. E. Cummings's Parentheses: Punctuation as Poetic Device', Style, vol. 42, no. 2, Temporal Paradoxes in Fiction and Stylistics in American Literatures (Summer 2009), pp. 215-247.
von Abele, R 1955. '‘Only to Grow’: Change in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings”', PMLA, vol. 70, no. 5, Modern Language Association, pp. 913–33.
Webster, M 2014, ‘E. E. Cummings’, in D E Chintiz and G McDonald (eds), A Companion to Modernist Poetry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
I was recently introduced to E.E. Cummings’s poetry when I came upon a video that sought to analyse his famous poem “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in”. What caught my attention in the first place was Cummings’s poetry reading (the video played an audio recording of Cummings reading the poem). I was captivated not only by his slow and soothing voice, but also by how articulate and confident he was with his pronunciation, even when the poem had clearly defied conventional grammar and “logic”. Furthermore, I was enthralled by his use of parentheses as a way to convey the theme of containment. Following this discovery, I went on a hunt for E.E. Cummings’s poetry and stumbled upon “as freedom is a breakfast food” in which I once again fell in love, but this time, with his use of juxtaposition, pairing seemingly unrelated subjects together to demonstrate the dualism and mutability of life and everything around it.
Long story short, I finally ended up purchasing “73 Poems”, which was the only available E.E. Cummings poetry book available in store. These 73 poems were published after his death in 1962 and I think it is fair to say that, despite them being unpublished while he was alive, some of his finest works are included in this collection. In particular, there are 12 poems that I want would like to single out as my favourites in this collection:
No. 5 – “the first of all my dreams was of”
No. 9 – “now is a ship”
No. 21 – “why”
No. 26 – “if seventy were young”
No. 29 – “the greedy the people”
No. 34 – ““nothing” the unjust man complained”
No. 35 – “the trick of finding what you didn’t lose”
No. 38 – “silently if, out of not knowable”
No. 57 – “mi(dreamlike)st”
No. 59 – “who is this”
No. 62 – “now does our world descend”
No. 73 – “all worlds have halfsight, seeing either with”
I will not dwell on why I enjoy these 12 poems specifically because I want to take this opportunity to reflect on E.E. Cummings’s poetry as a whole, that is, his writing style and poetic choices in general.
POEMPICTURE
To begin, it is clear that E.E. Cummings is a modernist. As Webster noted, Cummings’s aesthetics was formed in the early period of modernism between 1912-16, of imagism and the 1913 Armory Show. The artistic pursuit of the day was art as representing individual autonomy and expression, and most importantly, art that challenges 19th-century conventions and formulae. Accordingly, with this philosophy, Cummings set out to write poems that defied literary conventions, most predominately with the use of irregular line-arrangements, rhetorical capitalizations, rhetorical punctuations and unique word-forming. What this resulted in is something that Cummings called “poempictures”:
"But what I care infinitely is that each poempicture should remain intact. Why? Possibly because, with a few exceptions, my poems are essentially pictures"
VISUAL vs. ACOUSTIC
Indeed, as you would expect with any innovation, some people have been critical of Cummings's poempictures, and arguably it is not unjustified. R.P. Blackmur, for example, called Cummings's poetic choices "typographical peculiarities" and even went as far as saying that “to write a poetry in symbols which have no audible equivalents – a mere eye poetry –” is to commit “the sin against the Holy Ghost". Blackmur's rationale is based on the principle (his principle) that the poem "only takes wing on the page [but] persists in the ear". Now, this is not an unreasonable criticism because as Webster noted, "almost every poem Cummings wrote, including his sonnets, features some non-readable-aloud iconicity". Similarly, in trying to understand Cummings's frequent and creative use of parentheses, Tartakovsky stated, "parentheses are first and foremost signs of written language and do not have a necessary one-to-one vocal correspondent".
Therefore, what we have here is an undeniable tension within Cummings's poetry: visual vs. acoustic. Can poetry be something that can only be seen but not spoken? Can what my "eyes" and "mind" read differ from what my "mouth" reads? How do you read punctuation and space and arrangement and capitalisation? To push it even further, am I corrupting the integrity of E.E. Cummings's poempictures by reading it aloud?
SEEN, NOT HEARD
Cummings wrote:
"not all of my poems are to be read aloud – some…are to be seen & not heard...the day of the spoken lyric is past. The poem which has at last taken its place does not sing itself; it builds itself, three dimensionally, gradually, subtly, in the consciousness of the experience"
I am not sure whether I am completely satisfied that Cummings's statement answers my questions above, but it certainly provides us with the notion that his visual emphasis is a conscious and meaningful poetic decision. Heusser for example believed that Cummings's wanted reading to become "an experience that transcends the visual as well as the linguistic aspects of language, to become an ‘aesthetic’ experience".
Interestingly, there are some audio recordings of Cummings reading some of his "inaudible" poempictures, which in my opinion, despite his slow and soothing voice, does sound rather unnatural. Nevertheless, it can be read aloud if one desires to do so - whether that corrupts the integrity of the poem as noted above, or neglects a significant component of the poem, will ultiamtely depend on the poem itself and the perspective of the reader him/herself.
It is also worth noting that although most visual poetic devices that Cummings uses are generally inaudible, Cureton has, for instance, identified that some actual provide acoustic cues for how the poem should be read aloud; Cureton calls them "visual voice".
MEANING
Overall, despite all the typographical oddities in Cummings's poetry, all of his poems hold meaning. As Heusser noted, Cummings is a modernist, not an abstract expressionist. Heuseer said, "Cummings wants the reader to be able to find a meaning in his poetry, even if that sense-finding is occasionally coupled with a considerable effort on the reader’s part". Accordingly, he curiously noted that "the problem is caused less by a scarcity than an overabundance of conceivable explanations". Thus, I think he is justified by claiming that "for all the deviations that Cummings’s typography contains it is still remarkably conventional".
Indeed, Cummings still uses words' inherent meaning to construct his poems and to communicate his message. In general his poems advocate for individual autonomy and expression by highlighting the possibilities of life, love and nature. It is also interesting to note that he is pretty consistent with word choice or poetic structure when it comes to conveying his message. For example, he loves to use the words "illimatable", "spring" and "dream", which in "73 peoms" alone, these words can be found in several poems. He also loves to juxtapose opposing or seemingly irrelevant ideas, like for instance comparing "freedom" to "breakfast food", juxtaposing "seventy" and "young" and pairing "foolish" and "wise" together. In fact, I would argue that this message of dualism and use of creative metaphors epitomises Cummings's unique writing style and message.
All in all, I am very fortunate to have encountered E.E. Cummings and his poems and to have at hand a small collection of his enormous poetry work - "73 Poems". What I have ruminated above is only a very uneducated attempt to tease out of some of my own thoughts and feelings about Cummings's poetry. I hope my (hopefully comprehensible) reflections have inspired you to reconsider your thoughts about Cummings and to reread ((not) aloud) his poems. I'll end with one of my favourite stanzas in "73 peoms" - its from the poem "now does our world descend":
but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss—
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing
—arise,my soul;and sing
Sources & Further Reading:
Heusser, M 1995, 'The visual rhetoric of e. e. cummings's ‘poempictures’', Word & Image, vol. 11, no.1, pp. 16-30.
Mills Jr, R J 1959, 'The Poetry of Innocence: Notes on E. E. Cummings', The English Journal, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 433-442.
Tartakovsky, R 2009, 'E. E. Cummings's Parentheses: Punctuation as Poetic Device', Style, vol. 42, no. 2, Temporal Paradoxes in Fiction and Stylistics in American Literatures (Summer 2009), pp. 215-247.
von Abele, R 1955. '‘Only to Grow’: Change in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings”', PMLA, vol. 70, no. 5, Modern Language Association, pp. 913–33.
Webster, M 2014, ‘E. E. Cummings’, in D E Chintiz and G McDonald (eds), A Companion to Modernist Poetry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
December 29, 2019
Cummings has a modernist style but few of the ideas and doubts that make modernism interesting.
August 12, 2011
I have read a few e. e. cumming poems before, but never one right after the other. I thought he was a strange, but interesting and beautiful poet. And after having just read 73 of his poems, I now find him to be even more strange and more beautiful. I picked 2 of his that were my favorites:
Me up at does
out of the floor
quietly Stare
a poisoned mouse
still who alive
is asking What
have i done that
You wouldn't have
AND
everybody happy?
WE-WE-WE
& to hell with the chappy
who doesn't agree
(if you can't dentham
comma bentham;
or 1 law for the lions &
oxen is science)
Q:how numb can an unworld get?
A:number
I think these poems are fantastic and have endings that are extremely poignant. I also like e. e. cummings use of "i" and "you" which are sometimes interchangeable, sometimes the same thing... I find it all very fascinating. Totally worth it to read!
Me up at does
out of the floor
quietly Stare
a poisoned mouse
still who alive
is asking What
have i done that
You wouldn't have
AND
everybody happy?
WE-WE-WE
& to hell with the chappy
who doesn't agree
(if you can't dentham
comma bentham;
or 1 law for the lions &
oxen is science)
Q:how numb can an unworld get?
A:number
I think these poems are fantastic and have endings that are extremely poignant. I also like e. e. cummings use of "i" and "you" which are sometimes interchangeable, sometimes the same thing... I find it all very fascinating. Totally worth it to read!
May 23, 2008
i mean, i pick it up, read some, read some more later. i'm pretty sure i've read next to all of them by now. e.e. makes me happy. his wordplay brings a whole new sense of wonder to everyday beauty.
February 7, 2012
I'll be blunt. The poems I understand are wonderful. Those that Cummings made too obscure to understand annoy me. This review could have just as easily been 3 stars, but the book was understandable at the end.
January 3, 2016
While I have read e.e. Cummings poetry before this was the first time I read a collection of his work. He is an experience, as his poetry isn't necessarily read out loud but read as its construction is part of the poem. While some were too strange to me, majority was beautiful and surprising.
January 25, 2018
[rating = C+]
This poetry collection is less experimental compared to some of his others. He uses enjambment and fragmentation and spatiality, but many of the poems are in traditional form, almost sonnet-like in their execution, though he never dares to rhyme. He still achieves some significant phrasing and questions about humanity and love and spirituality, yet he is a bit more conservative in his approach.
This poetry collection is less experimental compared to some of his others. He uses enjambment and fragmentation and spatiality, but many of the poems are in traditional form, almost sonnet-like in their execution, though he never dares to rhyme. He still achieves some significant phrasing and questions about humanity and love and spirituality, yet he is a bit more conservative in his approach.
February 27, 2023
So many of these many little poems are so great. I read them and go: now, how did I not ever consider writing a word like that, or constructing an idea like that, or structuring a poem like? Once presented the ingenuity, it seems so obvious (even when whatever it is Cummings is trying to express remains delightfully obfuscated). But the reason why neither I nor you could ever come up with this stuff, is because either I nor you are E.E. Cummings.
November 16, 2023
This is a collection of poems published after his death. The back cover reviews give the collection high praise.
I cannot always understand what his geometrical word and letter play is getting at. I only understand a few of these poems and then wonder if they here helped along by that very odd punctuation and word splitting.
I must be a pHiliS
tiNe.
I cannot always understand what his geometrical word and letter play is getting at. I only understand a few of these poems and then wonder if they here helped along by that very odd punctuation and word splitting.
I must be a pHiliS
tiNe.
November 9, 2022
A little hit and miss, but definitely a lot of fun
August 31, 2021
ég er frekar hrifinn af stílnum hjá cummings, sem er hressandi módernískur - á gamla mátann
og mörg ljóðanna eru frábær, en hann getur bara verið svo bölvað væminn
og mörg ljóðanna eru frábær, en hann getur bara verið svo bölvað væminn
May 28, 2025
second reading may 2025:
waiting for the day someone I have slept with dies so I may do a number 22 out of 73 in verse. these poems are good but not as good as when i first read them. the novelty of pressing enter whenever you feel like it and not knowing how to use punctuation is great and he’s a genius, but when i do it i don’t get to have sex with annie because she died way before i was born. BOOO
first reading december 2020:
E. E. Cummings?
more lik
e E. E. Gushings (;;;from my pussy;;;)
waiting for the day someone I have slept with dies so I may do a number 22 out of 73 in verse. these poems are good but not as good as when i first read them. the novelty of pressing enter whenever you feel like it and not knowing how to use punctuation is great and he’s a genius, but when i do it i don’t get to have sex with annie because she died way before i was born. BOOO
first reading december 2020:
E. E. Cummings?
more lik
e E. E. Gushings (;;;from my pussy;;;)
February 24, 2025
(undering proudly
humbly overing)
all bright all
things swim climb minds
(down
slowly swoop wholly
up
leaping through merciful
sunlight)to
burst
in
a thunder of oneness
dream!
!joy
truth!
!soul
humbly overing)
all bright all
things swim climb minds
(down
slowly swoop wholly
up
leaping through merciful
sunlight)to
burst
in
a thunder of oneness
dream!
!joy
truth!
!soul
January 18, 2022
73 Poems, the first of two collections published after E. E. Cummings's death (the second being
Etcetera
), is a continuation of the poet's exploration of love and the triumph of the individual over conformity and complacency...
My favourite poems, in this or any other collection by E. E. Cummings, are the poems that have been fragmented and must be re-assembled like a puzzle...
The band Radiohead may have incorporated a line from one of E. E. Cummings's poems into the lyrics of one of their early songs...
seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here
- 3 (pg. 13)
if in beginning twilight of winter will stand
(over a snowstopped silent world)one
spirit serenely truly himself;and
alone only as greatness is alone -
one(above never moving all nowhere)
goldenly whole,prodigiously alive
most mercifully glorying keen star
whom she-and-he-like ifs of am perceive
(bu believe scarcely may)certainly while
mute each inch of their murdered planet grows
more and enormously more less: until
her-and-his existence vanishes
with also earth's
- "dying the ghost of you
whispers "is very pleasant" my ghost to
- 36 (pg. 50)
how many moments must(amazing each
how many centuries)these more than eyes
restroll and stroll some never deepening beach
locked in foreverish time's tide at poise,
love alone understands:only for whom
i'll keep my tryst until that tide shall turn;
and from all selfsubtracting hugely doom
treasures of reeking innocence are born.
Then,with not credible the anywhere
eclipsing of a spirit's ignorance
by every wisdom knowledge fears to dare,
how the(myself's own self who's)child will dance!
and when he's plucked such mysteries as men
do not conceive-let ocean grow again
- 71 (pg. 88)
My favourite poems, in this or any other collection by E. E. Cummings, are the poems that have been fragmented and must be re-assembled like a puzzle...
e
coco the uglies
t
s
ub
sub
urba
n skyline on earth between whose d
owdy
hou
se
s
l
ooms an eggyellow smear of wintry sense
t
- 16 (pg. 28)
n
Umb a
stree
t's wintr
y ugli
nes
s C
omprises
6
twirls of do
gsh
it m
uch f
ilt
h
Y slus
h & h
ideou
s 3 m
aybe
o
nce V
o
ices
- 17 (pg. 29)
n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
Ster
y
of
s
tilLnes
s
- 42 (pg. 56)
t,h;r:u;s,h;e:s
are
silent
now
.in silverly
notqu
-it-
eness
dre(is)ams
a
the
o
f moon
- 48 (pg. 62)
& sun &
sil
e
nce
e
very
w
here
noon
e
is exc
ep
t
on
t
his
b
oul
der
a
drea(chipmunk)ming
- 72 (pg. 58)
D-re-A-mi-N-gl-Y
leaves
(sEe)
locked
in
gOLd
after-
gLOw
are
t
ReMbLiN
g
,;:.:;,
- 66a (pg. 81)
The band Radiohead may have incorporated a line from one of E. E. Cummings's poems into the lyrics of one of their early songs...
silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile
sings or if(spiralling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss
losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
-you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
- 38 (pg. 52)
You are the sun and moon and stars, are you
And I could never run away from you
You try at working out chaotic things
And why should I believe myself, not you?
It's like the world is going to end so soon
And why should I believe myself?
You, me and everything caught in the fire
I can see me drowning, caught in the fire
Hey the sun and moon and stars are yeah
But I won't share myself with you
You to me
- "You" (from Pablo Honey)
December 14, 2021
This book contains 73 poems published posthumously in 1963, one year after Cummings passed away in 1962. The poems were presented to the printer by Marion Moorehouse, Cummings' 3rd wife and the great love of his life.
Like previous Cummings books, this one contains some real gems and some that leave you scratching your head in a way which is equal parts fascinating, equal parts irritating. What makes this collection different from previous collections I think is the large number of very short poems - it contains some of the shortest poems Cummings ever wrote. In this sense, Cummings reminds me of Samuel Beckett, who became increasingly more and more minimalist towards the end of his life. It's partly about less is more but also about carefully choosing the right words, not leaving in anything superfluous. And that's the general feeling you get both in late Beckett and late Cummings.
One of the most beautiful and amazing poems in this collection was about a sunset going down in winter in an urban setting. Cummings writes the words into a shape that also gives us a beautiful picture of the sunset going down behind the buildings. Here we see Cummings as poet and painter merge in this final volume - magnificent.
The only thing lacking from this volume is one thing: a well-thought-out sequence. Most of his previous books had a clear sequence in which sections of the book follow certain seasons, usually summer going into autumn, then going through winter (many poems about snow and snowflakes) and then finally spring and April, his favourite season. This book does not have this order because Cummings did not indicate what the order should be so they were published I suspect in the way the printer received them. This is a minor gripe. Apart, from that, this is a pretty strong collection of posthumous poems and definitely worth checking out. You can read it in an afternoon and as I gaze out the afternoon window, I thought I saw a robin or a bluejay or perhaps it was just a sparrow flying past and I think of Cummings and the vitality left behind in his work, the 'intensity' - something he valued more than anything else in art. Highly recommended.
Like previous Cummings books, this one contains some real gems and some that leave you scratching your head in a way which is equal parts fascinating, equal parts irritating. What makes this collection different from previous collections I think is the large number of very short poems - it contains some of the shortest poems Cummings ever wrote. In this sense, Cummings reminds me of Samuel Beckett, who became increasingly more and more minimalist towards the end of his life. It's partly about less is more but also about carefully choosing the right words, not leaving in anything superfluous. And that's the general feeling you get both in late Beckett and late Cummings.
One of the most beautiful and amazing poems in this collection was about a sunset going down in winter in an urban setting. Cummings writes the words into a shape that also gives us a beautiful picture of the sunset going down behind the buildings. Here we see Cummings as poet and painter merge in this final volume - magnificent.
The only thing lacking from this volume is one thing: a well-thought-out sequence. Most of his previous books had a clear sequence in which sections of the book follow certain seasons, usually summer going into autumn, then going through winter (many poems about snow and snowflakes) and then finally spring and April, his favourite season. This book does not have this order because Cummings did not indicate what the order should be so they were published I suspect in the way the printer received them. This is a minor gripe. Apart, from that, this is a pretty strong collection of posthumous poems and definitely worth checking out. You can read it in an afternoon and as I gaze out the afternoon window, I thought I saw a robin or a bluejay or perhaps it was just a sparrow flying past and I think of Cummings and the vitality left behind in his work, the 'intensity' - something he valued more than anything else in art. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2022
poetry:to me
is about passing images that
sometimes
stick but often pass by only
to return un:announced when le
ast expected
often it SlavishlY conforms to
rules as opaque as their
inventor’s (li:fe)
sometimes it is fresh
suprising
the trick of finding out what you didn’t lose
(existings tricky:but to live’s a gift)
the teachable imposture of always
arriving at the place you never left
conventions matter
but often get in oUr wAy
blocking
what we really want to
say
as do other
conVentions
elsewhere
that rule
(and I refer to thinking(rests upon
a dismal misconception:namely that
some neither ape nor angel called a man
is measured by his quote eye cue unquote.
and sometimes being
direcT
is what we need
yours is the light by which my spirit’s borne
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return
- you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
even though just how
direcT
might not be clear
n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
SteR
y
of
s
till.nes
s
agree
is about passing images that
sometimes
stick but often pass by only
to return un:announced when le
ast expected
often it SlavishlY conforms to
rules as opaque as their
inventor’s (li:fe)
sometimes it is fresh
suprising
the trick of finding out what you didn’t lose
(existings tricky:but to live’s a gift)
the teachable imposture of always
arriving at the place you never left
conventions matter
but often get in oUr wAy
blocking
what we really want to
say
as do other
conVentions
elsewhere
that rule
(and I refer to thinking(rests upon
a dismal misconception:namely that
some neither ape nor angel called a man
is measured by his quote eye cue unquote.
and sometimes being
direcT
is what we need
yours is the light by which my spirit’s borne
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return
- you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
even though just how
direcT
might not be clear
n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
SteR
y
of
s
till.nes
s
agree
July 22, 2025
Style over substance purist — took what Apollinaire was doing and ramped it up a notch. Adore this book.
Poem 67 is gorgeous in both verse and structure — embodies everything EE Cummings set out to do in his poetry.
Amongst the madness of structure some gorgeous phrases shine out;
“but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss—
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything’s nothing
—arise,mysoul;and sing”
I took so much from Apollinaire when I first discovered him, and now I feel as though upon reading EE Cummings my own personal poetic vision has been bolstered.
Poem 67 is gorgeous in both verse and structure — embodies everything EE Cummings set out to do in his poetry.
Amongst the madness of structure some gorgeous phrases shine out;
“but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss—
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything’s nothing
—arise,mysoul;and sing”
I took so much from Apollinaire when I first discovered him, and now I feel as though upon reading EE Cummings my own personal poetic vision has been bolstered.
July 6, 2017
Another really strong collection from one of my favorite modernist poets. Cummings's poetry manages to be both fearlessly experimental and emotionally resonant, touching on themes of love as a source of hope, the individual vs. the state, and many others. Nowadays, with so many contemporary poets refusing to go beyond a Bukowski-esque plainspoken free verse mode, Cummings continues to stand out as one of English-language poetry's most unique voices. Pick up any one of his collections and you won't be disappointed.
Read
December 28, 2022I was never a big e.e. cummings fan. The little games he plays with punctuation, parentheses, and splitting words always struck me as clever for the sake of cleverness and not really poetry in the way I understand it—as crafting meaning with real words. But there were several poems with real power in this collection—the aforementioned occasionally annoying but mostly benign cleverness notwithstanding—and I think I’m won over.
September 18, 2019
This is a collection of later poems by Cummings and they're not easy to read but worth it. They should be read aloud because they're hard to grapple with in the silence of the mind, and the meaning is in what's missing, the breaks and pauses and the hyphenated, parenthetical cadence, the white space.
June 5, 2021
I understood one poem in this book and it was about clocks.
/j, but there was quite a lot of “but what does that mean?”
I went from “oh I like this” to “maybe I don’t like this” to “I mostly like this” again at the end.
Inspired me though, and now I've got a couple short poems in a style similar to his.
/j, but there was quite a lot of “but what does that mean?”
I went from “oh I like this” to “maybe I don’t like this” to “I mostly like this” again at the end.
Inspired me though, and now I've got a couple short poems in a style similar to his.
February 10, 2023
I love reading poetry and wanted to enjoy this but it is just okay. I found some of the poems very confusing, some were good, and others I just didn't like. I haven't read any of E.E. Cummings poetry before and didn't know what to expect but I just didn't jive with them. I am going to try some of his others and hope I have better luck but for this compilation I give 2 stars.
December 12, 2018
These are a bit of a challenge to read based on the unique style. I don't really know how to describe it. Some of the poems are hard to follow, but this is my first experience with this author, so I am by no means familiar with the style.
January 15, 2020
I've been reading the book for a while and I'm telling whoever wants to read this it takes time to read and understand and if you don't want a book to confuse you do not get. but overall it is a good book with some good rhymes.
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