What do you think?
Rate this book
May I Feel Said He
The poem may i feel said he is a sensually ecstatic tribute to love and a humorous salute to the mating rituals between men and women. Originally published in Cumming's 1935 No Thanks collection, may i feel said he is one of the poet's most original and best loved works.
Marc Chagall's floating lovers and violin-playing horses are the perfect complement to Cumming's whimiscal poem. Chagall's lyrical work always reflected the artist's fascination with the many facets of love. "Is it not true that painting and color are inspired by love?" he wrote in 1973, at the age of 85. The twenty-three diverse paintings in this collection include many works that have rarely been seen in public.
may i feel said he is a stunning marriage of art and poetry and a giddy celebration of love.
Marc Chagall's floating lovers and violin-playing horses are the perfect complement to Cumming's whimiscal poem. Chagall's lyrical work always reflected the artist's fascination with the many facets of love. "Is it not true that painting and color are inspired by love?" he wrote in 1973, at the age of 85. The twenty-three diverse paintings in this collection include many works that have rarely been seen in public.
may i feel said he is a stunning marriage of art and poetry and a giddy celebration of love.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1995
4 people are currently reading
296 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-...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
February 10, 2017
This poem combined with the voice of Tom Hiddleston is freaking mind-blowing not to mention ovary-destroying. Definitely my favorite poem of all time. Literally had to fan myself throughout...
Can't get over his voice, très glorieux
I admit that I solely seek out this poem just to hear Tom's voice, but after repeated listening (I mean, can you really blame me?), the message behind it is powerful, if not all too familiar regarding the power play between men and women.
Reading the interpretation made me appreciate and admire this poem in a completely different way. It is written in lower cases with the exception of the word Mine for emphasis on the meaning.
Experience it yourself, prepare to be swooned...
Can't get over his voice, très glorieux
I admit that I solely seek out this poem just to hear Tom's voice, but after repeated listening (I mean, can you really blame me?), the message behind it is powerful, if not all too familiar regarding the power play between men and women.
Reading the interpretation made me appreciate and admire this poem in a completely different way. It is written in lower cases with the exception of the word Mine for emphasis on the meaning.
Experience it yourself, prepare to be swooned...
June 26, 2017
Close to the end of reading Camus's The Plague, a devastating dystopian work, and I stumbled on to this poem via my feed and saw that the break it provides is a perfect antidote to the bleak aspects of the novel, a respite, a swim in the ocean like Dr. Rieux and his friend Tarrou take as a break before dealing with more and more victims.
Oh! The poem! Not one of cummings's best, but it's so fun, and especially read with the sultry voice of Tom Hiddleston. Hear it here:
https://soundcloud.com/evencki/may-i-...
Oh! The poem! Not one of cummings's best, but it's so fun, and especially read with the sultry voice of Tom Hiddleston. Hear it here:
https://soundcloud.com/evencki/may-i-...
March 3, 2016
“may i feel said heMind. Officially. Blown. The poem is so overwhelming. Thank you Mr. Hiddleston. Thank you Mr. Cummings.
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she’’
I read/listened to this one thanks to the great review of Aisyah. (click on the name to see the review)
First of all; OH MY. Tom Hiddleston's voice. I've never enjoyed a poem so much!!
Second of all; OH MY. The poem. How come such a short poem can be so much fun to listen and read? I enjoyed so much the rhyme scheme but I gotta say the poem won me over with the combination of sexual tension and humor delivered with such pithy style. I think the author brakes down the character's "tension" in a humorous yet accurate way.
You can listen it for free here ;)
June 17, 2021
I didn't know how much I needed Tom Hiddleston to narrate an audiobook until I heard this...
December 1, 2014
Holy fuck said she.
(when she listened to the poem in the divine voice of Señor Hiddleston)
(when she listened to the poem in the divine voice of Señor Hiddleston)
Want to read
August 24, 2021Whew. One can only recommend seeking out Tom Hiddleston's reading of the titular poem. Dripping with sensuality.
January 16, 2024
My yearly dose of Tom Hiddleston and E.E Cummings
“may I feel said he
(I'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she’’
“may I feel said he
(I'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she’’
January 19, 2014
Apsolutna, čista, ekstatična erotika. Dvoje ljudi, dva glasa, dve misli, jedna želja. Kako je moguće da u tako malo reči stane ceo jedan svet?
March 2, 2014
What's better than Tom Hiddleston reading out this sensual work of art in his extraordinarily fine voice? NOTHING.
March 30, 2018
Some poems have a deeper meaning and some poems are able to spark a memory. But this simple and elegant poetry....hmm. Like most others I also heard this before I read this, in the sultry voice of Tom Hiddleston. (This man is unstoppable) This brings me back to my undergrad years when my girls and I used to talk about everything under the moon, from Romanov Sisters to well, Tom Hiddleston. I guess I would always smile when this poem creeps up into my playlist, no matter where I am.
April 5, 2015
This deserves a higher star rating than I'm giving it. I love Marc Chagall, and his paintings are used to great effect here. But, I don't have any such enthusiasm for this poem or for e. e. cummings as a poet in general. In fact, whenever people claim he's their favourite, I always want a justification, although I obviously have no business demanding such a thing. But the book as an object, yes, it's lovely.
November 12, 2007
i want to be buried with this book....enough said.
December 9, 2018
Are you kidding? e.e. cummings poem "may i feel said he/(i'll squeal said she..." with paintings by Marc Chagall. Orgasmic!
August 1, 2008
The gentle wordplay of e.e. cummings with the dream-like paintings of Chagall. Sublime!
November 22, 2021
Escuché este hermoso poema gracias a que fue narrado por la hermosa voz de Tom Hiddleston y...AHHHH, ¿Qué les puedo decir? ¡Fue todo una experiencia!
Maldita sea, dijo ella.
(cuando escuchó esta obra de arte con la voz divina de Mr. Hiddleston)
Lo escrito por E.E. Cummings es sensual y juguetón. Atrevido, osado e incluso, hasta cierto punto, romántico. Definitivamente entiendo el atractivo del texto.
No soy una gran admiradora de la poesía, pero puedo decir, sin lugar a dudas, que este en particular se ha convertido en uno de mis favoritos.
Y si aun no tuviste la dicha de escuchar la interpretación de Tom Hiddleston leyendo, ¡en serio no sé que estás esperando! Vas a terminar amándolo (tanto a Tom como al poema) mucho más. ¡Créeme!
Maldita sea, dijo ella.
(cuando escuchó esta obra de arte con la voz divina de Mr. Hiddleston)
Lo escrito por E.E. Cummings es sensual y juguetón. Atrevido, osado e incluso, hasta cierto punto, romántico. Definitivamente entiendo el atractivo del texto.
No soy una gran admiradora de la poesía, pero puedo decir, sin lugar a dudas, que este en particular se ha convertido en uno de mis favoritos.
Y si aun no tuviste la dicha de escuchar la interpretación de Tom Hiddleston leyendo, ¡en serio no sé que estás esperando! Vas a terminar amándolo (tanto a Tom como al poema) mucho más. ¡Créeme!
July 7, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
Yet again we are discussing another boring and uninteresting poem. On Goodreads the majority of the rates are very high which made my exceptions very high which this poem didn’t live up to.
The plot of this poem was very boring in a way but also it was in a way interesting so as you might expect my opinion is pretty mixed about the plot on this one.
The writing style here was pretty weak it might be just me who is very picky about what I liked and what I don’t like. But in my opinion it was pretty uninteresting.
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
Yet again we are discussing another boring and uninteresting poem. On Goodreads the majority of the rates are very high which made my exceptions very high which this poem didn’t live up to.
The plot of this poem was very boring in a way but also it was in a way interesting so as you might expect my opinion is pretty mixed about the plot on this one.
The writing style here was pretty weak it might be just me who is very picky about what I liked and what I don’t like. But in my opinion it was pretty uninteresting.
March 9, 2018
thank u, Tom, for gracing our ears with ur heavenly voice.
July 23, 2018
Listened to the version beautifully read by Tom Hiddleston available here
March 2, 2022
One of my favorite poems… listen to the video with tom hiddleston narrating, it’s so erotic and good!!!
December 9, 2023
Illicit love with Marc Chagall making it seem acceptable
Read
August 24, 2013I absolutely adored this poem. Although I was initially taken aback by the boldness of the content, I greatly appreciated the genius of cummings and what he reveals about the wants and desires of the two opposite sexes.
February 21, 2014
Discovered in late spring and saved (it was not easily held back) as a Valentine's Day gift for my twisted love. Combines the charm of illicit sex with the craft of ee cummings and the dreamwork of Marc Chagall. What more can one say?
November 16, 2014
I love the unexpected depth to this, the way Cummings plays with language and syntax to create a completely unique style. It is more art than poetry, I think, only the medium happens to be words instead of paint, or pencils.
May 17, 2017
Beautiful and sensual poem by E.E. Cummings. It's the first thing I've read from him and it definitely won't be the last.
Oh & I looked up readings of it online afterward and there's a wonderful one by Tom Hiddleston (you know, the actor). Really adds something to it.
Oh & I looked up readings of it online afterward and there's a wonderful one by Tom Hiddleston (you know, the actor). Really adds something to it.
December 5, 2007
This is just a really pretty book....and a really pretty poem....
June 25, 2023
One of my favorite poets and one of my favorite artists. Tough to beat!
March 7, 2009
Poetry by e.e. cummings and artwork by Marc Chagall. What could be more delectable?
May 14, 2009
What a marvelous way to make people love art and poetry! I want to buy this entire series.
August 13, 2012
art and poetry combined. love it!
August 16, 2013
So cute
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews