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50 Poems
Poetry
101 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
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About the author
E.E. Cummings
369 books3,949 followersEdward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
September 6, 2024
these poems
(make you think(
of what poetry
really is
but more that that(
what is poetic in you)
comes out. But that is
one
of the reasons why poetry(is/can be
Such a challenging
way to
Find expression (
that is always in fluxation and
In A world that
Takes away in
divid u Al ity
In the
now and here.
(make you think(
of what poetry
really is
but more that that(
what is poetic in you)
comes out. But that is
one
of the reasons why poetry(is/can be
Such a challenging
way to
Find expression (
that is always in fluxation and
In A world that
Takes away in
divid u Al ity
In the
now and here.
October 13, 2025
I hardly know where to begin because I usually begin from the platform of what I know, but it’s not clear that the point of reading e.e. cummings is to come away with declarative knowledge. cummings seems to have things to say but not a commitment to saying them directly. Rather the saying is in the way the poems ARE … on the page … they are more to be experienced than directly interpreted.
There are times, however, when cummings does seem to say something profound, but I can’t quite put my finger on it what it is — like this stanza in poem #40
It feels like a comment on the over-determinedness of individuality and experience by delegating definition of the individual to the whims of social convention or the cold, clinical gaze of science. At least that’s what I think about.
There are also poems that offer a perspective that appears tantalizing close to the level of direct communication, but the words hold the message right at the edge of understanding, leaving it ineffable … as in this one, poem #19
I found that I enjoyed reading some of these poems out loud. They were fun speak with the loopy ways that words and phrases fit together and create a rhythm that sometimes clearly pertained to the what the poems might have been about. I would stumble over the chopped up words, over the spatial ligatures, over the inverted and unclosed (or unopened) parentheses. And those stops created breaks within words and across lines. I found words in other words. I found meaning in syllables, and sometimes in just the sound a single letter makes when isolated from a word. Sometimes it was the absence of a word that I anticipated, but didn’t find, that made a statement. cummings wrote in a way that found the potential for meaning below the morpheme and outside of language itself, to include how the black marks of text visually came to rest on the white field of the page.
This was an enjoyable experience, but I can tell that my primitive, linear reading mindset needs a loosen up a bit.
There are times, however, when cummings does seem to say something profound, but I can’t quite put my finger on it what it is — like this stanza in poem #40
a peopleshaped toomany-ness too
and will it tell us who we are and will
it tell us why we dream and will it tell
us how we drink crawl eat walk die fly do?
a notative undead too-nearishness
It feels like a comment on the over-determinedness of individuality and experience by delegating definition of the individual to the whims of social convention or the cold, clinical gaze of science. At least that’s what I think about.
There are also poems that offer a perspective that appears tantalizing close to the level of direct communication, but the words hold the message right at the edge of understanding, leaving it ineffable … as in this one, poem #19
there is a here
that here was a
town(and the town is
so aged the ocean
wanders the streets are so
ancient the houses enter the
people are so feeble the feeble go to
sleep if the people sit down)
and this light is so dark the mountains
grow up from
the sky is so near the earth does not
open her
eyes(but the
feeble are people the feeble
are so wise the people
remember being born)
when and
if nothing disappears they
will disappear always who are filled
with never are more than
more is are mostly
almost are feebler than feeble are
fable who are less than these are least is who
are am(beyond when behind where under
un)
I found that I enjoyed reading some of these poems out loud. They were fun speak with the loopy ways that words and phrases fit together and create a rhythm that sometimes clearly pertained to the what the poems might have been about. I would stumble over the chopped up words, over the spatial ligatures, over the inverted and unclosed (or unopened) parentheses. And those stops created breaks within words and across lines. I found words in other words. I found meaning in syllables, and sometimes in just the sound a single letter makes when isolated from a word. Sometimes it was the absence of a word that I anticipated, but didn’t find, that made a statement. cummings wrote in a way that found the potential for meaning below the morpheme and outside of language itself, to include how the black marks of text visually came to rest on the white field of the page.
This was an enjoyable experience, but I can tell that my primitive, linear reading mindset needs a loosen up a bit.
February 6, 2017
"harder perhaps than a newengland bed"
- E.E. Cummings, 50 Poems, "20"
3-and-a-half times as
or perhaps maybe 4
high climbing ceiling
flatfooted verse floor.
Love's gordeon nots
untie impossible hands
Deaths anything aughts
under starslitteredsands.
50-poem poet shyly sings
life listens, love (too earlies
death) sons, father's 4-kings
teeth bite both boy&2girlies.
- E.E. Cummings, 50 Poems, "20"
3-and-a-half times as
or perhaps maybe 4
high climbing ceiling
flatfooted verse floor.
Love's gordeon nots
untie impossible hands
Deaths anything aughts
under starslitteredsands.
50-poem poet shyly sings
life listens, love (too earlies
death) sons, father's 4-kings
teeth bite both boy&2girlies.
November 23, 2023
e
e
isnot my (cup
of tea
e
isnot my (cup
of tea
October 12, 2019
Cummings’ experiments rarely seem to enhance any ideas, sentiments, effects.
February 10, 2017
I love E.E. Cummings poetry when it strikes me or makes sense somehow, and feel a little dumb when it doesn't. The ratio on this particular collection is weighted toward the feeling dumb side, though there were a few that I loved for being the kind of Cummings poem I love (and two that seemed weirdly and eerily appropriate in this difficult election season—43 and 50).
My copy of this book cost someone $1.25 at some point. I have no memory of how I acquired it but I suspect it has to do with how much I love the cover. (Don't judge)
My copy of this book cost someone $1.25 at some point. I have no memory of how I acquired it but I suspect it has to do with how much I love the cover. (Don't judge)
December 16, 2021
as one of my professors put it: “Just because God is Love does not mean Love is God.”
a little bit of VERY interesting stuff and a lot of stuff that’s very the opposite
a little bit of VERY interesting stuff and a lot of stuff that’s very the opposite
March 16, 2024
Only no.29
Read
June 3, 2019I think it's really funny. Cummings poetry makes my boyfriend super frustrated.
March 19, 2015
FAVORITES:
!black against
ecco a latter starting "dearest we"
these people socalled were not given hearts
as freedom is a breakfastfood
my father moved through dooms of love
a peopleshaped toomany-ness far too
up into the silence the green
hate blows a bubble of despair into
enters give whose lost is his found
!black against
ecco a latter starting "dearest we"
these people socalled were not given hearts
as freedom is a breakfastfood
my father moved through dooms of love
a peopleshaped toomany-ness far too
up into the silence the green
hate blows a bubble of despair into
enters give whose lost is his found
July 28, 2016
When I read an e.e. Cummings poem that sticks with me, it really sticks at me in an incomprehensible way like--"yes!! ok!!!!"
I wasn't really finding that throughout the collection at first, but then a few just hit me.
Namely, my favorites were: 19, 25, 34 & 41. Good stuff! Also the book itself is just so cute and I bought it in a library book sale for 50 cents if that counts for anything.
I wasn't really finding that throughout the collection at first, but then a few just hit me.
Namely, my favorites were: 19, 25, 34 & 41. Good stuff! Also the book itself is just so cute and I bought it in a library book sale for 50 cents if that counts for anything.
September 28, 2017
what is a poetry this book makes you ask
January 19, 2022
As a student at Harvard, Cummings was introduced to the works of avant garde poets and writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. He developed an interested that led to the development of his style, which ignored conventional grammar and syntax.
To begin with, the collection is dedicated...
Having the initials M. M., this satisfied me on a purely Narcissistic level.
The reader will immediately notice the poet's unconventional use of capitalization. Indeed, capitalization is infrequent, utilized by the poet for deliberate emphasis rather than adherence to grammatical conventions...
s ly)tuck.s.its(ghostsoul sheshape)
young Up
floatingly clothes tumbledish
olD(with
The reader will also appreciate the visual interest created by the poet's arrangement...
The poet frequently emphasizes the letter "e", always doubled (as in "warped this perhapsy" and "grEEn's d"). It would appear that the poet is signing his work. But this notion could just as easily be dismissed by other poems that follow a similar pattern (as in "fl" and "moan")...
sp-
inwhirlpin
- wh
EEling
;a!who,
grEEn's d
fl
a
tt
ene
d d
the she of the
sea
un
der a who
a he a moon a
magic out
Indeed, this is one of the poet's trademarks. Many of his poems are like puzzles. The reader is required to put words together, words that the poet has fragmented. In some cases, the reader is required to take apart words that the poet has put together (i.e., removed spacing). By fragmenting words, the poet often creates new meanings. In addition, by fragmenting words Cummings engages the reader...
w an d
ering
in sin
g
ular untheknowndulous s
pring
moon
's whis-
per
in sunset
As much as the poet is known for his innovative approach, many of his poems adhere to older forms. One of the poems he is best known for ("my father moved through dooms of love") is written in verse. But my favourite of the verse poems are the ones that combine the old and the modern, poems such as "" in which the poet intentionally misspells words so that the words not only rhyme but mirror each other...
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
to multiple because and why
dividing thens and nows
and adding and(i understand)
is hows to hump a cows
To begin with, the collection is dedicated...
to m. m.
Having the initials M. M., this satisfied me on a purely Narcissistic level.
The reader will immediately notice the poet's unconventional use of capitalization. Indeed, capitalization is infrequent, utilized by the poet for deliberate emphasis rather than adherence to grammatical conventions...
s ly)tuck.s.its(ghostsoul sheshape)
- warped this perhapsy
young Up
floatingly clothes tumbledish
olD(with
- grEEn's d
The reader will also appreciate the visual interest created by the poet's arrangement...
ask
her
ask
when
(ask and
ask
and ask
again and) ask a
- (will you teach a
The poet frequently emphasizes the letter "e", always doubled (as in "warped this perhapsy" and "grEEn's d"). It would appear that the poet is signing his work. But this notion could just as easily be dismissed by other poems that follow a similar pattern (as in "fl" and "moan")...
sp-
inwhirlpin
- wh
EEling
;a!who,
- warped this perhapsy
grEEn's d
- grEEn's d
fl
a
tt
ene
d d
- fl
the she of the
sea
un
der a who
a he a moon a
magic out
- moan
Indeed, this is one of the poet's trademarks. Many of his poems are like puzzles. The reader is required to put words together, words that the poet has fragmented. In some cases, the reader is required to take apart words that the poet has put together (i.e., removed spacing). By fragmenting words, the poet often creates new meanings. In addition, by fragmenting words Cummings engages the reader...
w an d
ering
in sin
g
ular untheknowndulous s
pring
- nouns to nouns
moon
's whis-
per
in sunset
- wherelings whenlings
As much as the poet is known for his innovative approach, many of his poems adhere to older forms. One of the poems he is best known for ("my father moved through dooms of love") is written in verse. But my favourite of the verse poems are the ones that combine the old and the modern, poems such as "" in which the poet intentionally misspells words so that the words not only rhyme but mirror each other...
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
- my father moved through dooms of love
to multiple because and why
dividing thens and nows
and adding and(i understand)
is hows to hump a cows
- the way to hump a cow is not
October 19, 2024
it was o
k (except for
afewmasterpieces)
like this 1 :
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
k (except for
afewmasterpieces)
like this 1 :
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
September 19, 2021
I most definitely read this too quickly. Despite so few words, this collection obviously requires more than the two sit downs that I had with it. I would love to come back to it one day (I read my sister’s copy so I might need to get my own if I decide to really take it apart).
As a whole, there were a few poems that caught me in the feels (19 22 38 47 especially) but I know that there were others that I did not even try to understand. On a certain level, I would really like to understand each poem and its many facets, but on the other, I feel somewhat uninterested in this style of poetry. I haven’t yet decided if this poetry feels worth my time personally—if I am going to get enough out of it to balance out the extra work to tear it all apart and get to the meat and bones of it— so I would like to read a few more collections like this since I’m just now giving them a chance. Maybe one day when I’ve gotten used to this style, I will change my rating.
As a whole, there were a few poems that caught me in the feels (19 22 38 47 especially) but I know that there were others that I did not even try to understand. On a certain level, I would really like to understand each poem and its many facets, but on the other, I feel somewhat uninterested in this style of poetry. I haven’t yet decided if this poetry feels worth my time personally—if I am going to get enough out of it to balance out the extra work to tear it all apart and get to the meat and bones of it— so I would like to read a few more collections like this since I’m just now giving them a chance. Maybe one day when I’ve gotten used to this style, I will change my rating.
October 2, 2018
There were a few good poems here, but a few I just didn't have the time to mull over the way I like to with poetry. Some of the poems were just not anything I want to read about at this stage in my life, though no doubt in my late teens I'd have thought them daring. Overall I just didn't enjoy these poems by him with the exception of maybe 4 or 5 of them. I'd only read a handful of his poetry in the past so I wasn't quite prepared for some of the subject matters in this book.
August 28, 2025
Utter hogwash. Was Cummings intoxicated whilst writing these? Not the intoxication which results in innovation, but paralysis of some kind. The writing across the page in nonsensical forms is just so bizarre. He probably thought this was a period of enlightenment, and typing random letters across the page was super intelligent. No one else reciprocates. I just don’t understand it. It’s so so outlandish. It’s like he has written a hidden, morse, enigmatic message which people in Bletchley Park would have cracked. If you want to get a migraine of nasty headache and feel completely wrathful, open this book. So odd.
January 3, 2021
This is one of those poets that I feel like I'm not smart enough to get. I really tried to take my time with this collection but only a few poems made me stop and pause and then reread.
His word choice is phenomenal. He writes lines that make me gasp. But the collection as a whole felt inaccessible.
His word choice is phenomenal. He writes lines that make me gasp. But the collection as a whole felt inaccessible.
June 18, 2020
Ibland orkar jag kanske inte med avantgardiska formexperiment ("trams"?). Då är det ju bra att verser som "lilla gran/lilla tysta julegran/du är så liten/du är mera lik en blomma" (s. 14) och strofer som "mina tårar är fulla av ögon" (s. 49) finns och liksom bryter igenom skiten.
January 1, 2024
e. e. cummings reads like the typewriting monkey that made, if not the works of Shakespeare, something stunningly almostpersonish. Like one of those pictures where you cross your eyes and the answer jumps out, these poems straddle the border of nonsense and inspiration. Worth reading again, slowly.
August 23, 2017
I have always loved reading e e cummings work. This was a rare treat I was able to find at the thrift store. It was a little bawdy in places, but it was very good.
August 1, 2021
feeling like a werewolf
Read
August 21, 2024don't cancel me but I don't like e e cummings
August 24, 2025
this young man should get an F minus for grammar and punctuation. whadda bunch of preetenshus hogwash. I love it.
January 1, 2011
Of the 50 poems in this collection, I love 5. There are another 3 or 4 that I liked up to the point that they stopped making sense. An additional 2 used spacing to control the reading pace in a way that compliments the subject, a great effect for poems I did not like. The rest came across as obscurity for the sake of obscurity. Feh.
September 11, 2020
Since my rating is so low I just wanted to say that I did really enjoy some of them (2. flattened dreamlessnesses, 3. if you can't eat you got to, 4. nobody loved this, 19. there is a here and, and 41. up into the silence) and "princess selene doesn't know a thing" and "dingsters die at break of dong" made me laugh. But when you only like 5 poems out of 50... 2 stars is generous
Want to read
July 14, 2014As always, Cummings requires you to bring a lot of yourself to his work. Actually he PLAYS. You WORK to make sense of it all. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes infuriating, this collection contains both straight-forward, traditional verse and experimental.
August 24, 2007
my favorite collection of his poetry that i have read to date.
his style is the meaning of creativity, eh?
his style is the meaning of creativity, eh?
September 7, 2009
Another mind bending read from e.e.
February 5, 2015
Eccentric genius. My favorite kind. :)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews