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E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1913-1962
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- GenresPoetryClassicsLiterature
866 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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265 people want to read
About the author
E.E. Cummings
369 books3,949 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 - 27 of 27 reviews
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July 14, 2022For anyone who thinks they may not be an e.e. cummings fan: I feel compelled to document my experience with his poetry because of how greatly my opinion of it changed over time.
I bought the book on a whim because I'd admired a few of his daring, unique poems in high school.
Reading through the entirety of his poetry was, at first, daunting. The first few hundred pages instilled a lot of confusion, and even when I did comprehend it, there was a lot of clashing between his joy and his cynicism (to say nothing of his occasional racism). Halfway through, I felt confident I would finish the book, but couldn't have given a definite rating, and didn't comprehend the ~4.62 rating he got on Goodreads.
But I stuck with the book, and sometime during the second half of the book I finally got it - I began to understand his style, his perspective, and his goals ... and once I'd learned the "language" I was able to see how incredibly beautiful it is. His poetry draws attention to the simplest, strongest experiences of our world, and cummings writes with a novelty and surprise that mimics the expressed experience itself. Brilliantly, he begs us, forces us, to slow down and witness something, or contemplate something, as it deserves. Eventually, he got me to do it: I hope he gets all of you to do it, too.
I bought the book on a whim because I'd admired a few of his daring, unique poems in high school.
Reading through the entirety of his poetry was, at first, daunting. The first few hundred pages instilled a lot of confusion, and even when I did comprehend it, there was a lot of clashing between his joy and his cynicism (to say nothing of his occasional racism). Halfway through, I felt confident I would finish the book, but couldn't have given a definite rating, and didn't comprehend the ~4.62 rating he got on Goodreads.
But I stuck with the book, and sometime during the second half of the book I finally got it - I began to understand his style, his perspective, and his goals ... and once I'd learned the "language" I was able to see how incredibly beautiful it is. His poetry draws attention to the simplest, strongest experiences of our world, and cummings writes with a novelty and surprise that mimics the expressed experience itself. Brilliantly, he begs us, forces us, to slow down and witness something, or contemplate something, as it deserves. Eventually, he got me to do it: I hope he gets all of you to do it, too.
Read
October 24, 2025Bu güzel şairi bu çirkin yayınevinden baska yayınevinin basmaması da onların ayıbı. İkinci ve son Ketebe kitabım. Bugün x'deki sansürün ortaya çıkmasıyla böyle başka şansımın olmadığı kitaplarda dahi tercih etmeyeceğim. Almayın aldırmayın. Yayıncılık sadece para işi midir?
January 19, 2023
Tesadüfen tanışıp okuma şansı elde etmeme rağmen çok sevdiğim bir şair oldu. Şiirlerindeki metafor ve kapalı anlam biraz zorlasa da keşfettikçe ve anladıkça ciddi manada keyif alıyorsunuz. Şiirlerdeki kelime oyunları Joyce vari anlatımı beni oldukça tatmin etti. Bir Şairin Öğrencilere Tavisyesi isimli gönderdiği mektuptaki şu bölüm ise tam hayatta prensip edilecek bir bölüm.
"Hiç kimse değil -ancak- kendiniz olmak -sizi bir başkası yapabilmek için gece gündüz elinden ardına koymayan bir dünyada- insanın verebileceği en güç savaştır; ve asla savaşmayı elden bırakmayın."
"Hiç kimse değil -ancak- kendiniz olmak -sizi bir başkası yapabilmek için gece gündüz elinden ardına koymayan bir dünyada- insanın verebileceği en güç savaştır; ve asla savaşmayı elden bırakmayın."
August 21, 2012
I keep checking this out of my library- I think I am the only one who ever does!
June 20, 2018
EE Cummings is pretty darn good. I suggest that you read him.
All of the poems together can get a little overwhelming, and you might want to start with, say, 100 Selected Poems (which I think is the first book of poems I ever purchased).
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 soul's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
-you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars
All of the poems together can get a little overwhelming, and you might want to start with, say, 100 Selected Poems (which I think is the first book of poems I ever purchased).
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 soul's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
-you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars
April 26, 2014
Well these were great, of course. I have to start reading more things that aren't poetry for fun though...I'm behind on everything else but my mind won't latch onto anything more solid at this point. Anyway, I'm glad Bjork used one of Cummings' poems on Medúlla (2004) because I have loved his work ever since and will likely always continue to do so.
Read
April 27, 2022This weighty collection was first published in 1972, and I read it in the closing years of that decade. Cummings is an astonishingly original poet who came at his craft with a unique individualism and an almost musical ear. Unfortunately, he is thought of mostly for his deliberate eschewing of almost all accepted practices of punctuation and capitalization. While interesting, I did not find that this added all that much to the ultimate value of the poems.
More importantly, I also found well over ninety percent of the works, almost all of which are short, lyrical, and much more descriptive than narrative in approach, largely incomprehensible. Very often, I’d finish the page-long poem and wonder ‘What was that about?’ This is a really serious problem, since when he hits it – and he certainly can do so, Cummings is one of the best.
I know of no other love poem that packs the emotional wallop of ‘somewhere I have never traveled,gladly beyond’. I know of no more fitting castigation of the emotional vacuity of communism than ‘kumrads die because they’re told)’. And I have rarely if ever found a more charming combination of rhyme and metrical rhythm capturing the living of nondescript lives through the passage of time as ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’. Finally, for a raucous if somewhat bawdy examination of the male-female sexual game, one need look no further than ‘may I feel said he’.
These are amazing poems. Would that all of his work had been marked by such insight and technical perfection. Any poet who could write such riveting and impressive verse needs to be read. However, maybe the ‘selected’ than the ‘complete’ edition would be a better choice.
Recommended.
More importantly, I also found well over ninety percent of the works, almost all of which are short, lyrical, and much more descriptive than narrative in approach, largely incomprehensible. Very often, I’d finish the page-long poem and wonder ‘What was that about?’ This is a really serious problem, since when he hits it – and he certainly can do so, Cummings is one of the best.
I know of no other love poem that packs the emotional wallop of ‘somewhere I have never traveled,gladly beyond’. I know of no more fitting castigation of the emotional vacuity of communism than ‘kumrads die because they’re told)’. And I have rarely if ever found a more charming combination of rhyme and metrical rhythm capturing the living of nondescript lives through the passage of time as ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’. Finally, for a raucous if somewhat bawdy examination of the male-female sexual game, one need look no further than ‘may I feel said he’.
These are amazing poems. Would that all of his work had been marked by such insight and technical perfection. Any poet who could write such riveting and impressive verse needs to be read. However, maybe the ‘selected’ than the ‘complete’ edition would be a better choice.
Recommended.
Read
September 6, 2020This is a massive book so I just flipped through and read bits and pieces. I am astounded by his use of language. I almost want to buy this book just to highlight words and phrases to get the beautiful language in my head. Also, there are no rules with his writing. NO RULES. It blows my mind. Of course, it is so confusing and out of order and difficult to decipher but I can see how he got a name for himself.
April 28, 2020
de(Lush)ous! Poetry Month 2020
June 22, 2023
saved my life multiple times
May 24, 2024
ee cummings #1 spring lover you’ll ever meet
May 26, 2024
e.e.cummings was my favorite poet when I was in high school and I thought it was time to revisit him.
Still love his diversity as a poet and his spiritual content.
Still love his diversity as a poet and his spiritual content.
May 31, 2024
Samet Köse çevirisini hiç beğenmedim. Neden orijinal dilinden okumadım diye kendime kızarak bitirdim kitabı.
November 16, 2024
As much as I like E E Cummings, stick with the Selected Poetry.
January 20, 2025
Cummings sevdiğimiz bi abimizdir yapısökük şiirlerinin hastasıyız ama biraz tekrarlı
October 12, 2025
open on page 112 ...
December 1, 2025
siir kitabi cok sarmiyo ama e.e.c. seviyorm o yuzdn 3 yildiz
April 11, 2017
I think I learned more from not liking most of these poems than I would have from loving them. Cummings did some fantastic writing, but honestly for me it was all done at the beginning of his career, before he really dove into the punctuation craziness 100%. I appreciate all that his writing has taught me, but he's definitely not one of my favorite poets.
February 21, 2009
He's my favorite poet - Yeats too, but Cummings can always make me smile. I can always open up one of his books and read one of his poems and feel better for it - even the poem about the unrefined boys!
His Complete Poems is one of the books that stays on my night stand.
His Complete Poems is one of the books that stays on my night stand.
November 9, 2020
bir çok önemli ve güzel şiirin yanında cummings'in sanat hakkındaki yazıları da derlenmiş. bir kaç karakalem çizimine de rastlayacağınız bir derleme. cummings'in şiirlerini severler, türkçeye kazandırılmış bu kitabı mutlaka edinmeliler.
December 19, 2008
I love ee cummings, he is such a passionate, complicated, simple and steamy guy
I read him all the time, perhaps because I love metaphor
I read him all the time, perhaps because I love metaphor
May 16, 2009
A rare exception to my lukewarm reception to modern poetry.
March 1, 2012
A friend introduced me to this guy. Changed my idea of what a poem could be.
May 1, 2012
have been reading this over the past year or so ... it is great. will probably be reading this for the rest of my life.
September 22, 2015
E.E. Cummings is one of my favorites, and I'm so glad that I got to read all of his work!
March 1, 2018
What is there not to love about the genius that is e.e. cummings? While not every poem was as easy, reading through his collection was a fascinating look at how a poet's work changes with them.
August 7, 2008
He's my favorite poet. I keep this book in my office, and I read 5 poems every morning.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews