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100 Selected Poems
Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 0802130720
E. E. Cummings is without question one of the major poems of this century, and this volume, first published in 1959, is indispensable for every lover of modern lyrical verse. It contains one hundred of Cummings's wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. These poems exhibit all the extraordinary lyricism, playfulness, technical ingenuity, and compassion for which Cummings is famous. They demonstrate beautifully his extrapolations from traditional poetic structures and his departures from them, as well as the unique synthesis of lavish imagery and acute artistic precision that has won him the adulation and respect of critics and poetry lovers everywhere.
E. E. Cummings is without question one of the major poems of this century, and this volume, first published in 1959, is indispensable for every lover of modern lyrical verse. It contains one hundred of Cummings's wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. These poems exhibit all the extraordinary lyricism, playfulness, technical ingenuity, and compassion for which Cummings is famous. They demonstrate beautifully his extrapolations from traditional poetic structures and his departures from them, as well as the unique synthesis of lavish imagery and acute artistic precision that has won him the adulation and respect of critics and poetry lovers everywhere.
121 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
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About the author
E.E. Cummings
372 books3,962 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 730 reviews
July 23, 2018
“let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love”
“no man,if men are gods;but if gods must
be men,the sometimes only man is this
(most common,for each anguish is his grief;
and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare)
a fiend,if fiends speak truth;if angels burn
by their own generous completely light,
an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn
rather than fail immeasurable fate)
coward,clown,traitor,idiot,dreamer,beast-
such was a poet and shall be and is
—who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend
a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:
and carve immortal jungles of despair
to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand”
“love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky”
“one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more
minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow
deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find”
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love”
“no man,if men are gods;but if gods must
be men,the sometimes only man is this
(most common,for each anguish is his grief;
and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare)
a fiend,if fiends speak truth;if angels burn
by their own generous completely light,
an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn
rather than fail immeasurable fate)
coward,clown,traitor,idiot,dreamer,beast-
such was a poet and shall be and is
—who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend
a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:
and carve immortal jungles of despair
to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand”
“love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky”
“one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more
minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow
deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find”
December 4, 2010
For some reason, I had never rated E. E. Cummings. He became the icon for form-twisting poetry, with his name written in lower-case reflecting the way his poems used and abused typography, grammar, and punctuation. I'm a symbol manipulating machine, it's why I'm a computer programmer and why I love to read. But I manipulate symbols within rules, and I love rules: I loved learning the rules of punctuation and spelling and grammar. Knowledge is power, it let me sort the world into right and wrong and to put myself on the right side.
Cummings, of course, broke the rules. It irritated me in the same way that Apple products irritate me today: it's deliberately broken. It could have be done right, but someone chose not to. For this reason I didn't even look at his poems. I love Auden, his cheek and poignancy, but he stayed well within my tolerance for linguistic deviancy.
Then a friend pressed this book into my hand. Actually, she pressed two and then opened them up and showed me a dog-eared page and said something absolutely filthy. I mean, how do you *not* get over your prejudices and read the books?
It's been magnificent. Consequently, if you're a serious Cummings fan then you're not going to be able to learn much from this review: it's my first dip into his work, and of course I have the heady dizziness of the newly-in-love. I don't have a lot of critical distinction yet, I'm high because something this wonderful simply exists.
My friend said she doesn't try to "make sense" of the poems: she bathes in the poems, stands up, and a few droplets of glistening prose stay on her skin and it's those that she takes with her. Cummings is easy to do this with: his style is deliberately translucent (neither opaque nor transparent) but almost every poem has some bright metaphors or clear lines that ring like crystal.
I can bathe and come out dripping in sweet lines too, but my brain is attuned to symbol manipulation. I also try to apart the poems to decode their meaning. I want to know why there's a wrong parenthesis, why there are blank lines, why this sentence makes no sense. I discovered, to my surprise, that I love it. I find it like cryptic crosswords: I'm not good, but I enjoy the process of teasing order from apparent disorder and discovering the concealed intent.
I probably should have read Wikipedia and a bunch of Cliffs Notes to see whether I'm "right", but one of the few consolations of age for me is confidence: I'm going to tell you how I approach Cummings and how I see his work. I'll be interested to read later and learn other approaches, but for now here's how I see it.
Cummings wants you to work on his poems: reading not a passive act, "jolly good, yes, that's exactly what a summer's day is like". He'll use a seeming stream of consciousness where you have to put yourself into someone else's mind in order to understand what that stream of words means. In one poem it seemed like he took a line of poetry and then put even-numbered words on one line and odd-numbered words on the next line. You can't skim read, you have to stop and frown and think. The metaphor is "paying attention", and Cummings has a high price. But he delivers great value.
The violated punctuation and blank lines and runtogether words are not random. For me it is as though you're often in the head of the narrator, someone who isn't composing a formal poem but you're getting a wash of thought, a stream of impressions and reflections. Sometimes those thoughts are crystal clear, sometimes they're jumbled and parenthetical and confused and contradictory. So parentheses and blank lines are pauses, indicating nested clauses or thoughts, but this raw gush of impressions doesn't permit the conscious structuring of those thoughts. They're almost pacing indicators. When I read the poem out loud, I can figure out the structure of the sentences.
But reviews don't lend themselves to the slow unwinding of intricate puzzles. If I want to convince you to read these poems, and I do, then I won't do it by explaining how I read them. Cummings soundbites are those glistening lines that shine from each poem, the ones that it you with such force that you reel back and blink, wondering "where did that come from?" Sometimes they're startling metaphors, sometimes they're just beautifully rhythmic statements that capture something essential.
the bulge and nuzzle of the sea . As someone who grew up on and near the ocean, I love this description.
the world is mud-licious and puddle-wonderful . Beautifully captures the delight kids (and some big kids) take in winter.
o sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty . Love the image of the earth as a baby, cheeks pinched by the aunty philosophers. The last line is great too: science, philosophers, religion all assault the earth in various ways but then the majestic earth answerest them only with spring). Nature is the reality, regardless of the stories and officious poking of people.
how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death . Comes at the end of a reminiscence on how impressive Buffalo Bill Cody was with horses and guns. I'm not quite sure how to read the question "how do you like your blue-eyed boy"--there's an element of challenge in it, and the juxtaposition of "blue eyed boy" and "Mister Death" is so startling.
The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds . I know that type of unmarried older woman, busy with projects. The last bit is a cracker, too: the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.
It May Not Always Be So is a beautiful sad statement: if you find someone else, I'll give you my blessing (but still be sad). The last line, revealing the hidden sadness: Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
here is little Effie’s head whose brains are made of gingerbread .
Spring is like a perhaps hand . Example of how you have to reread to find the intonation that makes sense: "perhaps" here is the hesitating, parenthetical, cautious "perhaps". The story of the poem works too: that Spring happens slowly, changing things slowly as we look, not breaking anything.
I like my body when it is with your body is sublimely erotic. It captures that new sex feeling, the way someone else can make you feel better about your body--can even make your body surprise you. Best line: the shocking fuzz of your electric fur narrowly beating out eyes big love-crumbs.
Humanity i love you is so sharp, acid, pointed, barbed, and sour that I love it all. No favourite line, but forever making poems in the lap of death is a beauty.
Nobody loses all the time is delightful, simple, accessible. Give this to someone you want to show the humorous side of Cummings to.
a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues . My sentiments exactly.
She being Brand -new is a sly and dirty automobile parable for nookie. I read and reread this, in love with the smut that isn't. the internalexpanding & externalcontracting brakes ftw.
A man who had fallen among thieves is all worldly vomit, thieves, citizens, pastures ... and then the last line i put him all into my arms and staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars. We are all staggering banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars.
Voices to voices, lip to lip make me cackle out loud at bring on your fireworks,which are a mixed / splendor of piston and of pistil;very well / provided an instant may be fixed / so that it will not rub,like any other pastel. I loved pistil, piston, and pastel. Disappointed he didn't work pistol in there too.
next to of course god america captures the meaningless incoherence of cliches. It reminds me of pop art, assembling a new unfamiliar statement from other people's narrow familiar works.
my sweet old etcetera I had already seen at university, but forgotten. This makes me laugh every time. I'm grinning as I write this, just remembering the poem. Definitely one of my favourites, the absent-minded narrator and the solid last line are great.
In spite of everything seems like a sad person saying goodbye to a dead lover. kiss the pillow, dear, where our heads lived and were.
since feeling is first mixes linguistic terms (syntax, paragraph, parenthesis) with love to contrast feeling and thinking. kisses are a better fate than wisdom is good, as is lady i swear by all flowersand I recognize laugh, leaning back in my arms.
If I have made my lady intricate is such a self-effacing speaker, it's hard for me not to identify. Beautiful lines: intricate imperfect various things and songs less firm than your body's whitest song and who are so perfectly alive. It's hard not to feel romantic reading some of his poems, and this is one of the more evocative for me.
A clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon has a great refrain: i have never loved you dear as i love you now. Some great lines conveying the meaningless of life without the special other: i am a birdcage without any bird, a collar looking for a dog,a kiss without lips;a prayer lacking any knees.
If i love you has a great line: mind carefully luminous with innumerable gnomes.
somewhere I have never travelled paints the delicacy of affection. you open always petal by petal myself as Spring open and nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility and the perplexing but hypnotic nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands.
but if a living dance upon dead minds has two nice phrases: the trivial labelling of punctual brains and Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
May i feel said he is another saucy poem, a cheeky parenthesis-filled act from foreplay to consummation. I love that it acknowledges the "I'm holding back, but it's close to being out of my control" negotiation. (He says, hoping it's not just him reading into the poem)
"Conceive a man" (no link, sorry) has the great line dark beginnings are his luminous ends.
Love's function is to fabricate unknownness catches the wonderful stage of love, how you're passionately curious about the other person and how the decline of curiosity tracks the decline of love (known being wishless;but love,all of wishing).
Death (having lost) put on his universe is a captivating first line. The universe as Death's raincoat is an enchanting image. The last lines are sing-song sweet: (and boys and girls have whispered thus and so) and girls with boys to bed will go.
Of Ever-Ever Land I speak has (and Ever-Ever Land is a place / that's measured and safe and known / where it's lucky to be unlucky / and the hitler lies down with the cohn) which cracked me up, and ends with for a bad cigar is a woman / but a gland is only a gland.
"This little bride & groom" describes a wedding cake, and ends with the jarring & everything is protected by cellophane against anything (because nothing really exists.
May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secret of living is a short and sweet love poem, with the fabulous may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple. Amen!
You shall above all things has a killer last night, oft quoted instead of the subtly lovely Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need: / i can entirely her only love. The last lines: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
Red rag and pink flag is a short childlike poem with the fabulous description of drunken munters: strut-mince and stink-brag / have all come to town. I think of that when I walk past the human effluvia dribbling out of bars on Courtenay Place.
a pretty a day is unremarkable but for a doer a wooer which reminds me of Steve Miller Band's I'm a joker / I'm a smoker / I'm a midnight toker.
As freedom is a breakfastfood has the euphonious molehills are from mountains made and breasts will be breasts and thighs will be thighs / deeds cannot dream what dreams can do.
A politician is an arse on which everyone has sat, except a man.
one's not half two. It's two are halves of one is a great summary of a relationship.
"To start, to hesitate, to stop" introduces seemingly random letters in this happy swelling poem. I read it, and frowned, realized there was a word in the letters, and came up with THADE, HEATD, ... before realizing eventually "DEATH". A great example of the cryptic crossword "made you work" aspect of Cummings. But only worth it because the raw input and the shiny lines and the clever juxtaposition are all there: I doubt many other poets could make me work and keep me happy at the same time.
Now all the fingers of this tree has the line now you are and i am now and we're a mystery which will never happen again which beautifully captures my simple awe at being alive.
Luminous tendril of celestial wish again hits me where I'm awestruck that I'm in love with someone so beautiful, who is made from stardust.
Cummings, of course, broke the rules. It irritated me in the same way that Apple products irritate me today: it's deliberately broken. It could have be done right, but someone chose not to. For this reason I didn't even look at his poems. I love Auden, his cheek and poignancy, but he stayed well within my tolerance for linguistic deviancy.
Then a friend pressed this book into my hand. Actually, she pressed two and then opened them up and showed me a dog-eared page and said something absolutely filthy. I mean, how do you *not* get over your prejudices and read the books?
It's been magnificent. Consequently, if you're a serious Cummings fan then you're not going to be able to learn much from this review: it's my first dip into his work, and of course I have the heady dizziness of the newly-in-love. I don't have a lot of critical distinction yet, I'm high because something this wonderful simply exists.
My friend said she doesn't try to "make sense" of the poems: she bathes in the poems, stands up, and a few droplets of glistening prose stay on her skin and it's those that she takes with her. Cummings is easy to do this with: his style is deliberately translucent (neither opaque nor transparent) but almost every poem has some bright metaphors or clear lines that ring like crystal.
I can bathe and come out dripping in sweet lines too, but my brain is attuned to symbol manipulation. I also try to apart the poems to decode their meaning. I want to know why there's a wrong parenthesis, why there are blank lines, why this sentence makes no sense. I discovered, to my surprise, that I love it. I find it like cryptic crosswords: I'm not good, but I enjoy the process of teasing order from apparent disorder and discovering the concealed intent.
I probably should have read Wikipedia and a bunch of Cliffs Notes to see whether I'm "right", but one of the few consolations of age for me is confidence: I'm going to tell you how I approach Cummings and how I see his work. I'll be interested to read later and learn other approaches, but for now here's how I see it.
Cummings wants you to work on his poems: reading not a passive act, "jolly good, yes, that's exactly what a summer's day is like". He'll use a seeming stream of consciousness where you have to put yourself into someone else's mind in order to understand what that stream of words means. In one poem it seemed like he took a line of poetry and then put even-numbered words on one line and odd-numbered words on the next line. You can't skim read, you have to stop and frown and think. The metaphor is "paying attention", and Cummings has a high price. But he delivers great value.
The violated punctuation and blank lines and runtogether words are not random. For me it is as though you're often in the head of the narrator, someone who isn't composing a formal poem but you're getting a wash of thought, a stream of impressions and reflections. Sometimes those thoughts are crystal clear, sometimes they're jumbled and parenthetical and confused and contradictory. So parentheses and blank lines are pauses, indicating nested clauses or thoughts, but this raw gush of impressions doesn't permit the conscious structuring of those thoughts. They're almost pacing indicators. When I read the poem out loud, I can figure out the structure of the sentences.
But reviews don't lend themselves to the slow unwinding of intricate puzzles. If I want to convince you to read these poems, and I do, then I won't do it by explaining how I read them. Cummings soundbites are those glistening lines that shine from each poem, the ones that it you with such force that you reel back and blink, wondering "where did that come from?" Sometimes they're startling metaphors, sometimes they're just beautifully rhythmic statements that capture something essential.
the bulge and nuzzle of the sea . As someone who grew up on and near the ocean, I love this description.
the world is mud-licious and puddle-wonderful . Beautifully captures the delight kids (and some big kids) take in winter.
o sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty . Love the image of the earth as a baby, cheeks pinched by the aunty philosophers. The last line is great too: science, philosophers, religion all assault the earth in various ways but then the majestic earth answerest them only with spring). Nature is the reality, regardless of the stories and officious poking of people.
how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death . Comes at the end of a reminiscence on how impressive Buffalo Bill Cody was with horses and guns. I'm not quite sure how to read the question "how do you like your blue-eyed boy"--there's an element of challenge in it, and the juxtaposition of "blue eyed boy" and "Mister Death" is so startling.
The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds . I know that type of unmarried older woman, busy with projects. The last bit is a cracker, too: the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.
It May Not Always Be So is a beautiful sad statement: if you find someone else, I'll give you my blessing (but still be sad). The last line, revealing the hidden sadness: Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
here is little Effie’s head whose brains are made of gingerbread .
Spring is like a perhaps hand . Example of how you have to reread to find the intonation that makes sense: "perhaps" here is the hesitating, parenthetical, cautious "perhaps". The story of the poem works too: that Spring happens slowly, changing things slowly as we look, not breaking anything.
I like my body when it is with your body is sublimely erotic. It captures that new sex feeling, the way someone else can make you feel better about your body--can even make your body surprise you. Best line: the shocking fuzz of your electric fur narrowly beating out eyes big love-crumbs.
Humanity i love you is so sharp, acid, pointed, barbed, and sour that I love it all. No favourite line, but forever making poems in the lap of death is a beauty.
Nobody loses all the time is delightful, simple, accessible. Give this to someone you want to show the humorous side of Cummings to.
a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues . My sentiments exactly.
She being Brand -new is a sly and dirty automobile parable for nookie. I read and reread this, in love with the smut that isn't. the internalexpanding & externalcontracting brakes ftw.
A man who had fallen among thieves is all worldly vomit, thieves, citizens, pastures ... and then the last line i put him all into my arms and staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars. We are all staggering banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars.
Voices to voices, lip to lip make me cackle out loud at bring on your fireworks,which are a mixed / splendor of piston and of pistil;very well / provided an instant may be fixed / so that it will not rub,like any other pastel. I loved pistil, piston, and pastel. Disappointed he didn't work pistol in there too.
next to of course god america captures the meaningless incoherence of cliches. It reminds me of pop art, assembling a new unfamiliar statement from other people's narrow familiar works.
my sweet old etcetera I had already seen at university, but forgotten. This makes me laugh every time. I'm grinning as I write this, just remembering the poem. Definitely one of my favourites, the absent-minded narrator and the solid last line are great.
In spite of everything seems like a sad person saying goodbye to a dead lover. kiss the pillow, dear, where our heads lived and were.
since feeling is first mixes linguistic terms (syntax, paragraph, parenthesis) with love to contrast feeling and thinking. kisses are a better fate than wisdom is good, as is lady i swear by all flowersand I recognize laugh, leaning back in my arms.
If I have made my lady intricate is such a self-effacing speaker, it's hard for me not to identify. Beautiful lines: intricate imperfect various things and songs less firm than your body's whitest song and who are so perfectly alive. It's hard not to feel romantic reading some of his poems, and this is one of the more evocative for me.
A clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon has a great refrain: i have never loved you dear as i love you now. Some great lines conveying the meaningless of life without the special other: i am a birdcage without any bird, a collar looking for a dog,a kiss without lips;a prayer lacking any knees.
If i love you has a great line: mind carefully luminous with innumerable gnomes.
somewhere I have never travelled paints the delicacy of affection. you open always petal by petal myself as Spring open and nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility and the perplexing but hypnotic nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands.
but if a living dance upon dead minds has two nice phrases: the trivial labelling of punctual brains and Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
May i feel said he is another saucy poem, a cheeky parenthesis-filled act from foreplay to consummation. I love that it acknowledges the "I'm holding back, but it's close to being out of my control" negotiation. (He says, hoping it's not just him reading into the poem)
"Conceive a man" (no link, sorry) has the great line dark beginnings are his luminous ends.
Love's function is to fabricate unknownness catches the wonderful stage of love, how you're passionately curious about the other person and how the decline of curiosity tracks the decline of love (known being wishless;but love,all of wishing).
Death (having lost) put on his universe is a captivating first line. The universe as Death's raincoat is an enchanting image. The last lines are sing-song sweet: (and boys and girls have whispered thus and so) and girls with boys to bed will go.
Of Ever-Ever Land I speak has (and Ever-Ever Land is a place / that's measured and safe and known / where it's lucky to be unlucky / and the hitler lies down with the cohn) which cracked me up, and ends with for a bad cigar is a woman / but a gland is only a gland.
"This little bride & groom" describes a wedding cake, and ends with the jarring & everything is protected by cellophane against anything (because nothing really exists.
May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secret of living is a short and sweet love poem, with the fabulous may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple. Amen!
You shall above all things has a killer last night, oft quoted instead of the subtly lovely Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need: / i can entirely her only love. The last lines: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
Red rag and pink flag is a short childlike poem with the fabulous description of drunken munters: strut-mince and stink-brag / have all come to town. I think of that when I walk past the human effluvia dribbling out of bars on Courtenay Place.
a pretty a day is unremarkable but for a doer a wooer which reminds me of Steve Miller Band's I'm a joker / I'm a smoker / I'm a midnight toker.
As freedom is a breakfastfood has the euphonious molehills are from mountains made and breasts will be breasts and thighs will be thighs / deeds cannot dream what dreams can do.
A politician is an arse on which everyone has sat, except a man.
one's not half two. It's two are halves of one is a great summary of a relationship.
"To start, to hesitate, to stop" introduces seemingly random letters in this happy swelling poem. I read it, and frowned, realized there was a word in the letters, and came up with THADE, HEATD, ... before realizing eventually "DEATH". A great example of the cryptic crossword "made you work" aspect of Cummings. But only worth it because the raw input and the shiny lines and the clever juxtaposition are all there: I doubt many other poets could make me work and keep me happy at the same time.
Now all the fingers of this tree has the line now you are and i am now and we're a mystery which will never happen again which beautifully captures my simple awe at being alive.
Luminous tendril of celestial wish again hits me where I'm awestruck that I'm in love with someone so beautiful, who is made from stardust.
January 12, 2020
i didn't realise Cummings wrote mostly in all lower case, leading me to think this book was a misprint or something.
took me awhile to truly get into these, but get into them I did!, and found well over half of the poems to be brilliant!
such a unique style, that was a great pleasure to read. what a way to get my poetic journey of 2020 off the ground!
Some of my faves were -
the cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
i like my body when it is with your
humanity i love you
my sweet old etcetera
if i love you
love's function is to fabricate unknownness
may my heart always be open to little
spoke to joe to jack
hate blows a bubble of despair into
true lovers in each happening of their hearts
darling! because my blood can sing
the great advantage of being alive
took me awhile to truly get into these, but get into them I did!, and found well over half of the poems to be brilliant!
such a unique style, that was a great pleasure to read. what a way to get my poetic journey of 2020 off the ground!
Some of my faves were -
the cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
i like my body when it is with your
humanity i love you
my sweet old etcetera
if i love you
love's function is to fabricate unknownness
may my heart always be open to little
spoke to joe to jack
hate blows a bubble of despair into
true lovers in each happening of their hearts
darling! because my blood can sing
the great advantage of being alive
July 12, 2009
I find reviewing poetry like reviewing a color. If your favorite color is blue, it's hard to explain why it appeals to you. Or why blue is better then red. Expressing the inarticulable, the ability to convey a sense of something beyond words through words, for me, is the greatness of a poet.
I first stumbled across cummings in high school in one of those gloss covered, all-encompassing, "LITERATURE" textbooks that public schools are so fond of. And, for whatever reason, e.e. cummings has accompanied me since. Since my first reading, I find various poems of his serving as signposts throughout my life. Now, possibly out of habit, I continually retreat to him whenever facing change.
Though certain poems have resonated for one reason or another more vibrantly at different times, what consistently comforts me is his sense of freedom. Content-wise and structurally. At first I considered it iconoclastic pretension, but I now find his broken cadence and grammatical structure a welcome vehicle for expressing the asymmetrical emotions that govern.
I lack the versed depth to critically compare or analyze cummings work. As for what it's given me, 5 stars is probably a poor tribute.
I first stumbled across cummings in high school in one of those gloss covered, all-encompassing, "LITERATURE" textbooks that public schools are so fond of. And, for whatever reason, e.e. cummings has accompanied me since. Since my first reading, I find various poems of his serving as signposts throughout my life. Now, possibly out of habit, I continually retreat to him whenever facing change.
Though certain poems have resonated for one reason or another more vibrantly at different times, what consistently comforts me is his sense of freedom. Content-wise and structurally. At first I considered it iconoclastic pretension, but I now find his broken cadence and grammatical structure a welcome vehicle for expressing the asymmetrical emotions that govern.
I lack the versed depth to critically compare or analyze cummings work. As for what it's given me, 5 stars is probably a poor tribute.
September 4, 2015
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
Because mornings are best served with a slice of poetry.
August 8, 2024
cummings isn't for everyone, I know, but really, he's more accessible than people think. This collection is a wonderful way to try out his poems for people who are new to him and a sheer delight for those of us who love him.
Not every poem here is marvelous, of course. There are some missing I'd have included and some included that I'd have left out, but that's merely personal preference. And frankly, with both "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "my father walked through dooms of love" included, the other 98 could've been pure shite and this would still be a 5-star book. Fortunately, there are many, many more wonderful poems than just those two.
This was a perfect first read for the year--a reminder that no matter how badly humans may mess up the world, we are also capable of great hope and joy.
Not every poem here is marvelous, of course. There are some missing I'd have included and some included that I'd have left out, but that's merely personal preference. And frankly, with both "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "my father walked through dooms of love" included, the other 98 could've been pure shite and this would still be a 5-star book. Fortunately, there are many, many more wonderful poems than just those two.
This was a perfect first read for the year--a reminder that no matter how badly humans may mess up the world, we are also capable of great hope and joy.
December 20, 2021
Od paperijastog do rogobatnog, na pukotini između tradicionalnijih, rimovanih lirskih formi i avangardne sintakstičke rašrafljenosti, Kamings gradi svoju pesničku kuću. Sa otmenošću svakidašnjice, izazivački igrivo, ali i značajno ironično, uporno istražuje područija neusklađenosti između uma i srca.
(since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you)
Kamings je i briljantan pesnik uzajamnosti. Nešto posebno radi sa lirskim subjektom, koji kao puzavica obgrljuje svoje voljeno biće, koje mu odgovara odjekom zagrljaja. Dok se prizori ukrštaju, spoj postaje i zvučna reka i nešto što prevazilazi susret dva bića, dobijajući neko novo svojstvo, koji izmiče i glavi i repu.
(kiss this pillow, dear / where our heads lived and were)
Ima i kod Kamingsa dobro temperovanog nehaja, što daje utisak kao da izvlači stihove iz rukava. Ponegde i gurkanja, pošalica, a svugde plesa sa svodovima i hodnicima jezika. Kad izađe na čistinu, može doći i do panteizma bliskog američkim transcedentalisitma.
(i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes)
(and now you are and i am now and we’re
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before –
and shining this our now must come to then)
Izmaštavši svoju interpunkciju, kubističku, integralističku, Kamings pokazuje kako u jeziku čuči jedan novi, temeljniji jezik, do koga se dolazi vrlo retko i uvek posredno – zamešateljstvom pesništva.
Internet je, srećom, pun divnih kazivanja Kamingsovih pesama. Ali ja šaljem jednu njegovu uzglabljenu formu, u izvođenju Bjork: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24YS4...
it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be,i say if this should be—
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands
(since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you)
Kamings je i briljantan pesnik uzajamnosti. Nešto posebno radi sa lirskim subjektom, koji kao puzavica obgrljuje svoje voljeno biće, koje mu odgovara odjekom zagrljaja. Dok se prizori ukrštaju, spoj postaje i zvučna reka i nešto što prevazilazi susret dva bića, dobijajući neko novo svojstvo, koji izmiče i glavi i repu.
(kiss this pillow, dear / where our heads lived and were)
Ima i kod Kamingsa dobro temperovanog nehaja, što daje utisak kao da izvlači stihove iz rukava. Ponegde i gurkanja, pošalica, a svugde plesa sa svodovima i hodnicima jezika. Kad izađe na čistinu, može doći i do panteizma bliskog američkim transcedentalisitma.
(i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes)
(and now you are and i am now and we’re
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before –
and shining this our now must come to then)
Izmaštavši svoju interpunkciju, kubističku, integralističku, Kamings pokazuje kako u jeziku čuči jedan novi, temeljniji jezik, do koga se dolazi vrlo retko i uvek posredno – zamešateljstvom pesništva.
Internet je, srećom, pun divnih kazivanja Kamingsovih pesama. Ali ja šaljem jednu njegovu uzglabljenu formu, u izvođenju Bjork: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24YS4...
it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be,i say if this should be—
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands
December 10, 2025
To see eternity when fixed in time - through the transactional objects that we objectify through our existence - eventually seeing past this - said items melting away - smelted in Zen furnace of existence - that consumes that which feeds it - purgative ash that cleanses sight with lacrimal rejection of illusion...in other words...one of my favorite poets!
July 30, 2008
My first Cummings book (it cost me $1.95 many years ago) and still my favorite. There are so many poems in here which I think are good poems. The general critical consensus seems to be that Cummings was second-rate. Well, for me, he is more engaging than many poets that others fawn over. He was an accomplished sonneteer, though you might not recognize all his sonnets for what they are at first, due to his experiments with orthography. He was a fine erotic poet, and an effective political satirist. He had variety. He didn't write poem after poem that sounded like the same monotonous droning of Portentous Hush. Also, he made his living entirely through his writing, except for one brief stint as a guest professor at Harvard. Unlike many poets of today, academia was not his ambition. Perhaps that's one of the reasons he's not placed higher in the pantheon.
April 1, 2015
As I finished this slim book, I puzzled over how to best explain how it makes me feel. I got this image in my head:
If I were stranded on a deserted island and allowed to take one book with me, this book would be in my top five of final, possible picks. If I picked this book to take with me, when someone found me ten years later, I would still be puzzling over some of the meaning of the poems; I would still be kept comfortably happy, sad, shy, engaged, and peaceful by the texture, the emotion of these poems; I would still be engaging with and dissecting these 100 poems; I would have been driven quite insane in those ten years by these poems.
Another inroad: When I read poetry, I have a tendency to rate the poems on the fly with little stars in the margins. This allows me to skim back through a volume later and to immediately find something that engaged me before. There are dozens and dozens of six, seven, and eight star rating scattered throughout this book. My scale used to go only to five.
I think I have sufficiently explained how this volume makes me feel. Yet I haven't said a word about the poems themselves. What's left to say? They do all that poetry should do; they will challenge you intellectually, emotionally, and at many levels of language. They ask you deep philosophical questions, and then they shift gears into soaring emotions. They beg you to parse them one way, then cleverly show you another way to read each sentence even as you try to mark out your thoughts. The poems lend themselves to conversation, to analysis, and they will reward you over and over.
As I've done with a few other reviews at this point, I'll share something that I liked best from the book. I won't type out the entire poem, but the first part of this one has a nice image that I think sells cummings well:
From 95
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
If I were stranded on a deserted island and allowed to take one book with me, this book would be in my top five of final, possible picks. If I picked this book to take with me, when someone found me ten years later, I would still be puzzling over some of the meaning of the poems; I would still be kept comfortably happy, sad, shy, engaged, and peaceful by the texture, the emotion of these poems; I would still be engaging with and dissecting these 100 poems; I would have been driven quite insane in those ten years by these poems.
Another inroad: When I read poetry, I have a tendency to rate the poems on the fly with little stars in the margins. This allows me to skim back through a volume later and to immediately find something that engaged me before. There are dozens and dozens of six, seven, and eight star rating scattered throughout this book. My scale used to go only to five.
I think I have sufficiently explained how this volume makes me feel. Yet I haven't said a word about the poems themselves. What's left to say? They do all that poetry should do; they will challenge you intellectually, emotionally, and at many levels of language. They ask you deep philosophical questions, and then they shift gears into soaring emotions. They beg you to parse them one way, then cleverly show you another way to read each sentence even as you try to mark out your thoughts. The poems lend themselves to conversation, to analysis, and they will reward you over and over.
As I've done with a few other reviews at this point, I'll share something that I liked best from the book. I won't type out the entire poem, but the first part of this one has a nice image that I think sells cummings well:
From 95
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
July 19, 2022
It may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
If this should be,i say if this should be—
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
If this should be,i say if this should be—
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
April 2, 2019
I opened POETRY month with one that's been on my shelf for awhile!
100 Selected Poems was my first full-length collection by Cummings, the well-known 20th-century American poet. I enjoyed his form and syntax play, with a variety of themes: nature, erotica, religious, to everyday observational.
100 Selected Poems was my first full-length collection by Cummings, the well-known 20th-century American poet. I enjoyed his form and syntax play, with a variety of themes: nature, erotica, religious, to everyday observational.
December 30, 2018
Not to be disrespectful or anything, but sometimes I had the feeling e.e.cummings just smashed his forehead on his typewriter and called it poetry.
My favorite example?
brIght
bRight s??? big
(soft)
soft near calm
(Bright)
calm st?? holy
(soft briGth deep)
yeS near sta? calm star big yEs
alone
(wHo
Yes
near deep whO big alone soft near
deep calm deep
????Ht????T)
Who(holy alone)holy(alone holy)alone
To me, this is meme material, not poetry.
Poetry is supposed to make you feel something, but I just felt deceived reading this collection, because I couldn't understand which was the aim of the poet, or the theme, or the reason behind the writing.
And the writing style. Oh boy, the only time I saw so many parenthesis on my page was doing math homework.
And in my middle-grade journal, where I wrote stuff like:
S(he) be(lie)ve(d)
I am open to modern poetry and its innovation, but it was like being weird for weird's sake.
Or, to say it in a form that Cummings would have enjoyed:
Maybe Im toodumb- or tooyoung???
2 underStand this col(lection)
or maybe I'm
Shallow
like that
Lady GaGa song
(anyway Im sorry)
The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that I did enjoy 2 poems (2 of 100!) and I genuinely think that e.e.cummings would have got along with my favorite forest king, Walt Whitman. They would have spent entire DAYS drooling over leaves of grass and indigo skies.
And, by the way, if you all keep bashing on Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace for their Tumblr poetry, remember that Cummings was the first one randomly hitting the enter key to make it sound ~deeper~ so stop the hypocrisy.
My favorite example?
brIght
bRight s??? big
(soft)
soft near calm
(Bright)
calm st?? holy
(soft briGth deep)
yeS near sta? calm star big yEs
alone
(wHo
Yes
near deep whO big alone soft near
deep calm deep
????Ht????T)
Who(holy alone)holy(alone holy)alone
To me, this is meme material, not poetry.
Poetry is supposed to make you feel something, but I just felt deceived reading this collection, because I couldn't understand which was the aim of the poet, or the theme, or the reason behind the writing.
And the writing style. Oh boy, the only time I saw so many parenthesis on my page was doing math homework.
And in my middle-grade journal, where I wrote stuff like:
S(he) be(lie)ve(d)
I am open to modern poetry and its innovation, but it was like being weird for weird's sake.
Or, to say it in a form that Cummings would have enjoyed:
Maybe Im toodumb- or tooyoung???
2 underStand this col(lection)
or maybe I'm
Shallow
like that
Lady GaGa song
(anyway Im sorry)
The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that I did enjoy 2 poems (2 of 100!) and I genuinely think that e.e.cummings would have got along with my favorite forest king, Walt Whitman. They would have spent entire DAYS drooling over leaves of grass and indigo skies.
And, by the way, if you all keep bashing on Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace for their Tumblr poetry, remember that Cummings was the first one randomly hitting the enter key to make it sound ~deeper~ so stop the hypocrisy.
November 19, 2016
I had always thought Cummings was all about punctuation and syntax gimmicks, but reading this slim volume made me reevaluate his poetry. Sure, there are insufferable poems included here that might just be pure poetic masturbation, but when he's successful—that is, when he manages to use those syntactical and punctuation quirks as stepping stones to transcend ordinary meaning—he reaches a depth that can't be reached otherwise, and the effect is often one of chilling delight, from wonderfully cryptic yet perfectly simple "for love are in we am in i are in you" and nonsensical but charmingly musical "what if a much of a which of a wind..." to odd but darkly compelling "it is most mad and moonly / and less it shall unbe" and breathlessly triumphant "Love only has ever been,is,and will ever be,So." I don't know if I want to read all his opus, but I'm still glad I read this collection and found such a voice in American poetry: idiosyncratic, sometimes profound, always passionate.
April 5, 2020
some of these poems abounded in clichés, a few of them were actually genius, but way too many just felt... lazy. i’d definitely love to read more of his poetry though!
no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ
jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed(as
close as i’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness
no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ
jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed(as
close as i’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness
May 15, 2021
"sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)
lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive
(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)
not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing
(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)
"sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)
lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive
(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)
not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing
(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)
"sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
May 7, 2016
I’m not sure I was clever enough to understand what EE Cummings had to say in these 100 poems of his. Most of them are hardly a page long and very short but like my aversion of short stories there was something in this book of short poems that just didn’t click with me. I remember opening a Brian Transeaux (I think) album and reading the following excerpt from a Cumming’s poem and being blown away as an 18 year old:
“Deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
Time is a tree (this life is one leaf)
But love is the sky, and I am for you
Just so long and long enough”
There were a few other poems which were pretty good but I just really didn’t connect with most of the others. It’s a short book which you could probably rattle out in a few hours.
“Deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
Time is a tree (this life is one leaf)
But love is the sky, and I am for you
Just so long and long enough”
There were a few other poems which were pretty good but I just really didn’t connect with most of the others. It’s a short book which you could probably rattle out in a few hours.
February 4, 2021
من خیلی تلاش کردم که کامینگز رو دوست داشته باشم. علاوهبراین اشعارش رو به طور پراکنده هم خونده بودم قبلاً. چون از این اصلاً خوشم نیومد و عذابوجدان گرفتم، رفتم مقالات و رفرنسهایی هم جسته و گریخته دربارهش خوندم. صادق باشم، بازم خوشم نیومد. بازم باعث نشد دیدم به شعرش بهتر بشه. چرا یکی باید سخت بنویسه و از خودش هی چیزی دربیاره و اینقدر بیمعنی شعرهاش به نظر برسن؟ رسماً احساس خنگ بودن و بیسوادی بم دست میداد. آخه آوانگارد بودن و تجربهگرایی هم حدی داره.
+ الان رفتم ریویوهای خارجی رم خوندم. چقدر ستاره. آدم میخواد گریه کنه. شما از شعر چیزی میدونید یا ماها آدم نیستیم؟!
تا برخوردم به یک ریویو از خانم بئاتریس که چنین زیبا نوشته:
Not to be disrespectful or anything, but sometimes I had the feeling e.e.cummings just smashed his forehead on his typewriter and called it poetry.
و در انتهای ریویوش گفته چرا کسایی مثل روپی کور (اگه درست نوشته باشم) اینقدر معروف میشن وقتی رندوم فقط کلمه پرت میکنن که فکر کنی چه چیز عمیقی دارن میگن. اولین یا شاید از اولین کسایی که این حرکت رو شروع کرده، کامینگز بوده.
+ الان رفتم ریویوهای خارجی رم خوندم. چقدر ستاره. آدم میخواد گریه کنه. شما از شعر چیزی میدونید یا ماها آدم نیستیم؟!
تا برخوردم به یک ریویو از خانم بئاتریس که چنین زیبا نوشته:
Not to be disrespectful or anything, but sometimes I had the feeling e.e.cummings just smashed his forehead on his typewriter and called it poetry.
و در انتهای ریویوش گفته چرا کسایی مثل روپی کور (اگه درست نوشته باشم) اینقدر معروف میشن وقتی رندوم فقط کلمه پرت میکنن که فکر کنی چه چیز عمیقی دارن میگن. اولین یا شاید از اولین کسایی که این حرکت رو شروع کرده، کامینگز بوده.
March 17, 2026
Bernard Shaw famously said,
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”
and based on reading this also by our choice of celebrated poets.
I was looking forward to becoming familiar with cummings as I’d never read his works and I had seen a lot of reviews extolling his work. I read each one of the 100 poems in here and with the exception of one (which was probably the most conventional in style) I could not engage with any of them. I felt the lay outs, the lack of capitals, the repetition all served to mask a lack of depth and an over sentimentality.
little bride & little
groom in it kind of stands on
a thin ring which stands on a much
less thin very much more
big & kinder of ring & which
kinder of stands on a
much more than very much
biggest & thickest & kindest
of ring….
This poem continues in this vein, saying nothing. I can’t get away from the childishness of it and the erroneous ‘ofs’ which just grate on me.
And this:
my speciality is living said
a man (who could not earn his bread
because he would not sell his head)
squads right impatiently replied
two billion pubic lice inside
one pair of trousers (which had died).
Eh? What is this saying other than the slight sniggery joy of being rude – ooh public lice hee hee. Plus – and I’m sure the ambiguity is deliberate it is unclear what has died the lice or the trousers.
I may have missed the point and therefore be blind to the genius of cummings but he is not the poet for me.
I was looking forward to becoming familiar with cummings as I’d never read his works and I had seen a lot of reviews extolling his work. I read each one of the 100 poems in here and with the exception of one (which was probably the most conventional in style) I could not engage with any of them. I felt the lay outs, the lack of capitals, the repetition all served to mask a lack of depth and an over sentimentality.
little bride & little
groom in it kind of stands on
a thin ring which stands on a much
less thin very much more
big & kinder of ring & which
kinder of stands on a
much more than very much
biggest & thickest & kindest
of ring….
This poem continues in this vein, saying nothing. I can’t get away from the childishness of it and the erroneous ‘ofs’ which just grate on me.
And this:
my speciality is living said
a man (who could not earn his bread
because he would not sell his head)
squads right impatiently replied
two billion pubic lice inside
one pair of trousers (which had died).
Eh? What is this saying other than the slight sniggery joy of being rude – ooh public lice hee hee. Plus – and I’m sure the ambiguity is deliberate it is unclear what has died the lice or the trousers.
I may have missed the point and therefore be blind to the genius of cummings but he is not the poet for me.
April 13, 2026
That weird guy with the broken Shift key
Like many of you, I first became aware of E.E. Cummings in High School English class. Our textbook contained a few quirky little poems written entirely in lower case by a guy who called himself E.E. Cummings. (Cummings usually signed his name with capital letters -- writing it "e.e. cummings" was an innovation of his publisher's.)
There is a lot more to Cummings than made it into my high school textbook. But fair enough, it accurately conveyed one thing. Cummings was concerned with the way his poems appeared on the page. Experts who take it on themselves to tell other people the One Right Way to Appreciate Poetry will tell you that you should always read poetry aloud. If you do that with Cummings you will miss a lot.
One of the first poems in this collection that really caught my attention was Buffalo Bills's. (Use that link to see how Cummings splayed this poem over the page.) The sentence "how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death" particularly grabbed me.
Another powerful poem is i sing of Olaf
I was also surprised at how erotic some of the poems were. Cummings was in fact well known for his erotic poetry. In this collection it's fairly muted. But when I read the last verse of my sweet old etcetera
There are in fact many love poems, but they are quite different from most love poems you have ever read. When most poets write love poems, they write hymns of praise to the object of their affections, most typically their physical attributes. Cummings doesn't do that. He writes about the experience of being in love. Even in the fragment I just quoted you will note that although he dreams of "your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera," Cummings does not explicitly praise them.
A surprise, considering Cummings's obvious inclination towards unconventional forms, was the number of sonnets. They are a little bent, but the core of the sonnet form -- 14 lines of iambic pentameter -- is there.
I didn't like the later poems as much. They're too self-consciously quirky. But there is plenty of brilliance in the earlier poems. If you like poetry, you should look at Cummings.
Blog review.
Like many of you, I first became aware of E.E. Cummings in High School English class. Our textbook contained a few quirky little poems written entirely in lower case by a guy who called himself E.E. Cummings. (Cummings usually signed his name with capital letters -- writing it "e.e. cummings" was an innovation of his publisher's.)
There is a lot more to Cummings than made it into my high school textbook. But fair enough, it accurately conveyed one thing. Cummings was concerned with the way his poems appeared on the page. Experts who take it on themselves to tell other people the One Right Way to Appreciate Poetry will tell you that you should always read poetry aloud. If you do that with Cummings you will miss a lot.
One of the first poems in this collection that really caught my attention was Buffalo Bills's. (Use that link to see how Cummings splayed this poem over the page.) The sentence "how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death" particularly grabbed me.
Another powerful poem is i sing of Olaf
i sing of Olaf glad and bigHe goes on to praise Olaf's courage. (Olaf is capitalized. The only capital letters in this poem are references to God and Olaf.)
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
I was also surprised at how erotic some of the poems were. Cummings was in fact well known for his erotic poetry. In this collection it's fairly muted. But when I read the last verse of my sweet old etcetera
(dreaming,there was no doubt in my mind what Cummings had in mind with the words "your Etcetera."
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
There are in fact many love poems, but they are quite different from most love poems you have ever read. When most poets write love poems, they write hymns of praise to the object of their affections, most typically their physical attributes. Cummings doesn't do that. He writes about the experience of being in love. Even in the fragment I just quoted you will note that although he dreams of "your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera," Cummings does not explicitly praise them.
A surprise, considering Cummings's obvious inclination towards unconventional forms, was the number of sonnets. They are a little bent, but the core of the sonnet form -- 14 lines of iambic pentameter -- is there.
I didn't like the later poems as much. They're too self-consciously quirky. But there is plenty of brilliance in the earlier poems. If you like poetry, you should look at Cummings.
Blog review.
June 29, 2015
It's hard to rate an anthology of poetry because there were individual poems in there that I drop-dead loved, others I just liked. There were others I did not like at all and there were some I had trouble understanding. Of the ones I had trouble understanding there were some that I figured if I was a little smarter, or better read or had more similar cultural capital to the poet maybe I would have had a chance, but there were some I suspected the poet was just being subjective to the point of incoherence (which is pretty self-indulgent). The way he used language and punctuation was obviously meant to be critical or creative or something (and in the better poems brought in a whole beautifully sarcastic flavour to it). But the thing about breaking the rules of communication- what's the point if you lose coherence and intelligibility?
Like the emperor's new clothes I suppose I am meant to nod and smile and pretend I understand what he did. But a lot of the time I didn't. And I am yet to be convinced the poet himself knew some of the time as well.
Like the emperor's new clothes I suppose I am meant to nod and smile and pretend I understand what he did. But a lot of the time I didn't. And I am yet to be convinced the poet himself knew some of the time as well.
September 20, 2012
Ever since my modern literature class in college, I've kind of had a thing against Cummings. I hated his style. As a grammar nazi, it completely confused me. When the professor suggested that we read the poems aloud, I scoffed. I loved poetry and I never had to read it aloud before so why should I now?
However, that professor was correct.
When I came across this book on one of my lists, I told myself that I could suffer through just 100 poems. I didn't suffer through them at all, though. It was poem 3 that hooked me. "when god lets my body be//From each brave eye shall sprout a tree..." I read it through once. I read it through twice. I waited for my boyfriend to get home from work and read it to him. I loved it. It perfectly expressed something that I had been thinking about for a while. I felt validated.
After that, I started writing down first lines of poems I liked but there were too many.
How could I have been so very wrong?
However, that professor was correct.
When I came across this book on one of my lists, I told myself that I could suffer through just 100 poems. I didn't suffer through them at all, though. It was poem 3 that hooked me. "when god lets my body be//From each brave eye shall sprout a tree..." I read it through once. I read it through twice. I waited for my boyfriend to get home from work and read it to him. I loved it. It perfectly expressed something that I had been thinking about for a while. I felt validated.
After that, I started writing down first lines of poems I liked but there were too many.
How could I have been so very wrong?
May 23, 2016
let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love
January 13, 2022
#28: "we are for each other: then / laugh, leaning back in my arm / for life’s not a paragraph / And death i think is no parenthesis"
March 25, 2018
There were a few I really enjoyed, some I didn't feel anything about, and there even a couple I couldn't understand anything about. I feel like I could read these again in a couple of years and it would be a completely different experience.
February 7, 2017
L-am descoperit pe Cummings în Magonia și nu credeam că o să îmi placă atât de mult.
Read
December 28, 2022Found this super cool edition amongst my aunt’s old stuff(!)
Liked a lot of these quite a bit —
e. e. cummings
#62 - “my father moved through dooms of love”
“septembering arms of year extend”
“by octobering flame beckoned”
#67 - “hate blows a bubble of despair into”
“fear buries a tomorrow under woe”
#85 - “darling!because my blood can sing”
“(though such a perfect hope can feel / only despair completely strikes / forests of mind,mountains of soul)”
“Hills jump with brooks: / trees tumble out of twigs and sticks;”
#87 - “o by the by”
“with a swoop and a dart / out flew his wish / (it dived like a fish / but it climbed like a dream)”
#90 - “if a cheerfulest Elephantangelchild should sit”
“little he(having flown / even higher) is sunning his penguinsoul in the glow / of a joy which wasn’t and isn’t and won’t be words”
Liked a lot of these quite a bit —
e. e. cummings
#62 - “my father moved through dooms of love”
“septembering arms of year extend”
“by octobering flame beckoned”
#67 - “hate blows a bubble of despair into”
“fear buries a tomorrow under woe”
#85 - “darling!because my blood can sing”
“(though such a perfect hope can feel / only despair completely strikes / forests of mind,mountains of soul)”
“Hills jump with brooks: / trees tumble out of twigs and sticks;”
#87 - “o by the by”
“with a swoop and a dart / out flew his wish / (it dived like a fish / but it climbed like a dream)”
#90 - “if a cheerfulest Elephantangelchild should sit”
“little he(having flown / even higher) is sunning his penguinsoul in the glow / of a joy which wasn’t and isn’t and won’t be words”
September 26, 2021
The first time I have read the poetry of ee cummings and I thought it was all excellent. Not that I understood every poem in this book, no. But those I did understand were often poignant, quirky and wise, and those I didn't understand still had music and rhythm.
January 13, 2024
All I would ever ask Cummings is what do you have against capitalization?
August 9, 2015
My rating of works of poetry are always purely based on my personal enjoyment of them and are never based on the skill of the writing. To me, poetry is all about perception and whether or not the words speak to you. 100 Selected Poems proves that E.E. Cummings was a master manipulator of words. His voice in these poems was so witty and clever and sometimes I would have to take a lengthy pause at the end of a piece before it would click and I'd say "I see what he did there!". While being unique and brilliant, I just didn't see much here that really struck me on a personal level (my whole reason for reading poetry)!
There were a few lines I was particularly fond of though:
"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"
"if there are heavens, then my mother will (all by herself) have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lillies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses..."
And here from my favorite, poem #8:
"it may not always be so; and I say
that if your lips, which I have loved, should
touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away...
...if this should be, I say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that I may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me..."
There were a few lines I was particularly fond of though:
"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"
"if there are heavens, then my mother will (all by herself) have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lillies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses..."
And here from my favorite, poem #8:
"it may not always be so; and I say
that if your lips, which I have loved, should
touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away...
...if this should be, I say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that I may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me..."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 730 reviews