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Is Five...
e.e. cummings' fourth poetry collection demonstrates his skilled modernist voice and unmatched ability to test the limitations of the English language. First published in 1926, is 5 contains 88 poems in cummings' distinctively complex style. Featuring satirical work, many experimental pieces, and several anti-war poems, this volume is a collection of modernist poetry that explores classic poetic themes. This volume's title is the first hint of e. e. cummings' signature grammatical style. In the foreword, he claims that a poet gains advantage from their 'ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb'. He suggests that poets are able to roam outside the bounds of punctuation and syntax, therefore, where it is indisputably known that 'two time two is four', poets are able to explore other possibilities for the sum's answer, giving the volume its title is 5 . Five sections are featured in this collection, including notable poems such - 'my sweet old etcetera' - 'She being Brand' - 'since feeling is first' Now in a new high-quality edition, is 5 has been proudly republished by Ragged Hand, Read & Co. Books' specialist poetry imprint. An ideal read for fans of war poetry and cummings' experimental work.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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About the author
E.E. Cummings
369 books3,950 followersEdward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
January 8, 2017
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- Cummings, Is 5
Cummings 88 poems feel rough
stitched:-:stretched like Guernica
colored by Chagall -- 5new moons
blue hooked ¿and? baitedborn to
electric days & postWar night --
mares harnessed to wet dreams
of hopebithard & starssewed
tight
(O visions lost from EE's herds
sounds&other than;this his iamb's words
And death i think is no parenthesis
- Cummings, Is 5
Cummings 88 poems feel rough
stitched:-:stretched like Guernica
colored by Chagall -- 5new moons
blue hooked ¿and? baitedborn to
electric days & postWar night --
mares harnessed to wet dreams
of hopebithard & starssewed
tight
(O visions lost from EE's herds
sounds&other than;this his iamb's words
April 1, 2009
e.e. cummings _Is 5_ is good. I often think that cummings's reputation gets in the way of enjoying his poetry, especially at an academic level. This is one of his earlier books, and the opening preface gives a perfect voicing of his aesthetic platform.
While cummings is obviously an intellectual descendant of Whitman and Transcendentalism, for my own purposes, I tend to see a lot of connections between him and Neruda, spiritually. All of the beauty and soul Neruda finds in the physical land surrounding him, I think cummings conveys in a more airy realm of twisted syntax and subtle rhyme. Even Neruda's more political poetry (which I don't care for) has a companion in cummings's sympathetic portraits of prostitutes, soldiers, his parents, and other people who populated his cities.
To get involved with e.e. cummings's actual books, as opposed to collections, this is an excellent start.
While cummings is obviously an intellectual descendant of Whitman and Transcendentalism, for my own purposes, I tend to see a lot of connections between him and Neruda, spiritually. All of the beauty and soul Neruda finds in the physical land surrounding him, I think cummings conveys in a more airy realm of twisted syntax and subtle rhyme. Even Neruda's more political poetry (which I don't care for) has a companion in cummings's sympathetic portraits of prostitutes, soldiers, his parents, and other people who populated his cities.
To get involved with e.e. cummings's actual books, as opposed to collections, this is an excellent start.
April 21, 2010
Absolutely fab,a must read for any1 who likes Bukowski & William S. Burroughs. His idiosyncratic use of punctaution grammar & s p a c i n g is really original & ilove the disjointed thoughts sounds like a cutup
Would recommend for Beat fans & tRUE liter aries
e
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s
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a
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Would recommend for Beat fans & tRUE liter aries
e
e
c
u
m
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n
g
s
y
a
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!
February 16, 2016
it is so long since my heart has been with yours
*
our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories
*
am this person of whom somehow
you are never wholly rid (and who
does not ask for more than
just enough dreams to
live on)
*
our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories
*
am this person of whom somehow
you are never wholly rid (and who
does not ask for more than
just enough dreams to
live on)
May 31, 2013
from the fOREWORD, by the author: "Ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas nonmakers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four, he rejoices in a purely irresistible truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of the present volume)."
This is his fifth book, divided into five sections. The first section is the longest.
More intoxicating than a fifth of Jack.
Reading non-anthologized cummings is a good way to chart the poet's arguments and growth.
Give this book to any preschool poets in need of teeth cutting.
This is his fifth book, divided into five sections. The first section is the longest.
More intoxicating than a fifth of Jack.
Reading non-anthologized cummings is a good way to chart the poet's arguments and growth.
Give this book to any preschool poets in need of teeth cutting.
November 29, 2020
Three thoughts - Cummings is a strong defender of the mantra: "gotta know the rules to break the rules." Shakespeare would quake at the sight of the final five sonnets. ee is still a better painter than poet.
September 16, 2019
Cummings presents himself as both hip modernist and regular guy - anti-war soldier, prostitutes’ friend, cosmopolitan populist, etc.
Read
December 29, 2025Recommended for fans of homework. Cummings’ work is challenging and requires you to dive in with every resource at your disposal to define words, translate languages, and look up bygone cultural references. Many poems with deliberate misspellings and typographical errors insist on being read aloud in order to gain meaning. I found this guide incredibly helpful: https://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cum...
I was first introduced to Cummings in an Intro to Poetry class in college along with Modernist contemporaries like Eliot and Pound. I wrote a paper on “next to of course god america i,” so I was expecting mostly political and antiwar poetry. There’s a whole section of that here, but there are also poems about seeing the world, drunk jokes, being in love, sexual encounters, murder, and funny people Cummings saw on the street. It’s a bizarre and at times moving collection of work.
Favorite poems include: “death is more than,” “nobody loses all the time,” “Will i ever forget that precarious moment?” and “since feeling is first.”
I was first introduced to Cummings in an Intro to Poetry class in college along with Modernist contemporaries like Eliot and Pound. I wrote a paper on “next to of course god america i,” so I was expecting mostly political and antiwar poetry. There’s a whole section of that here, but there are also poems about seeing the world, drunk jokes, being in love, sexual encounters, murder, and funny people Cummings saw on the street. It’s a bizarre and at times moving collection of work.
Favorite poems include: “death is more than,” “nobody loses all the time,” “Will i ever forget that precarious moment?” and “since feeling is first.”
December 3, 2023
Took awhile to get into the swing of his comically imprecise precision, but as a whole I found it very inspiring & rewarding. Some of the best love poems I've ever read, too.
January 18, 2022
is 5 is an early collection of poems by E. E. Cummings (his fifth, if I'm not mistaken). The title, however, is not derived from this being his fifth collection, but rather from Cummings's approach to writing poetry, as Cummings explains in the Foreword...
is 5 is a continuation of the poet's exploration of love and the triumph of the individual over conformity and complacency...
My favourite poems share one characteristic: they have been fragmented and must be re-assembled like a puzzle. Although there weren't many of those in this particular collection (much to my disappointment)...
Ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas nonmakers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two time two is four, he rejoices in a purely irresistible truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of the present volume.)
- Foreword
is 5 is a continuation of the poet's exploration of love and the triumph of the individual over conformity and complacency...
you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,
am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure - you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
- that since and if you disappear
solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile
and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep - what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be,being,that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
- what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like, for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."
- FOUR, XII (pg. 101)
My favourite poems share one characteristic: they have been fragmented and must be re-assembled like a puzzle. Although there weren't many of those in this particular collection (much to my disappointment)...
ta
ppin
g
toe
hip
popot
amus Back
gen
teel-ly
lugu-
bri ous
eyes
LOOPTHELOOP
as
fathandsbangrag
- ONE, XXXVI (pg. 48)
it's jolly
odd what pops into
your jolly tete when the
jolly shells begin dropping jolly fast you
hear the rrmp and
then nearerandnearerandNEARER
and before
you can
!
& we're
NOT
(oh -
- i say
that's jolly odd
old thing, jolly
odd, jolly
jolly odd isn't
it jolly odd.
- TWO, IV (pg. 63)
inthe,exquisite;
morning sure lyHer eye s exactly sit,ata little roundtable
among otherlittle roundtables Her,eyes count slow(ly
obstre poroustimidi ties surElyfl)oat iNg,the
of pieces ofof sunligh tof fa l l in gof throughof treesOf.
(Field Elysian
the like,a)slEEping neck a breathing a ,lies
(slo wlythe wom an pa)ris her
flesh:wakes
in little streets
while exactlygir lisHlegs;play;ing;nake;D
and
chairs wait under the trees
Field slowly Elysian in
a firmcool - Ness taxis,s.QuirM
and, b etw ee nch air st ott er s thesillyold
WomanSellingBaloonS
In theex qui site
morning,
her sureLyeye s sit-ex actly her sitsat a surely!little,
roundtable amongother;littleexactly round. tables,
Her
.eyes
- THREE, V (pg. 79)
take it from me kiddo
believe me
my country, 'tis of
you,land of the Cluett
Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint
Girl With The Wrigley Eyes(of you
land of the Arrow Ide
and Earl &
Wilson
Collars)of you i
sing:land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham,
land above all of Just Add Hot Water And Serve -
from every B. V. D.
let freedom ring
amen. i do however protest,anent the un
-spontaneous and otherwise scented merde which
greets one(Everywhere Why)as divine poesy per
that and this radically defunct periodical. i would
suggest that certain ideas gestures
rhymes,like Gillette Razor Blades
having been used and reused
to the mystical moment of dullness emphatically are
Not To Be Resharpened. (Case in point
if we are to believe these gently O sweetly
melancholy trillers amid the thrillers
these crepuscular violinists among my and your
skyscrapers - Helen & Cleopatra were Just Too Lovely,
The Snail's On The Thorn enter Morn and God's
In His andsoforth
do you get me? )according
to such supposedly indigenous
throstles Art is O World O Life
a formula:example, Turn Your Shirttails Into
Drawers and If It Isn't An Eastman It Isn't A
Kodak therefore my friends let
us now sing each and all fortissimo A-
mer
i
ca, I
love,
You. And there're a
hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers,like
all of you successfully if
delicately gelded (or spaded)
gentlemen(and ladies) - pretty
littleliverpil-
heated-Nujolneeding-There's-A-Reason
americans(who tensetendoned and with
upward vacant eyes,painfully
perpetually crouched,quivering,upon the
sternly allotted sandpile
-how silently
emit a tiny violetflavoured nuisance: Odor?
ono.
comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush
- Poem, Or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal (pg. 8-9)
July 24, 2023
e.e. cummings's style works best for me when hitting the profound, the inexpressible, the emotive and especially romantic. The more grounded and political pieces in this collection mostly did not connect for me as a consequence. But even when he's not working for me, I appreciate the way he works.
June 11, 2010
I'd really give it 3 and a half stars. I hadn't read e.e.cummings in a very long time and forgot how simple and complex he is. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed him. The reason for the 3 and a half as oppose to the 4 is simply because there were some poems that were fine but within the grand scheme of the section or book were a bit weak or fell short. However the ones that are amazing are absolutely wonderful and its those poems that carry you on to the next. It is in the earlier sections that some of the poems aren't as strong by the time you reach half of it especially in section 4 and 5 the poems that are alright but not amazing become fewer and the second half of the book holds better than the first for that. There is something about his poems that can make you swoon and can make you want to walk away, however in the end you just end up laying there next to them.
August 12, 2022
This is the first collection of cummings poetry I've read. Early work from 1926. These poems were enjoyable on several levels, engaging my mind simultaneously as a form of puzzle solving or code-cracking and through the sheer joy of language (even when freed from the strictures of syntax.)
If there is a code to help the reader, it is expressed by the author himself in a short introduction as to approach these poems as one would approach the math problem "2 times 2 is 4" except for cummings the answer, as the books title asserts "is 5". Helpful? Maybe. Playful? Absolutely.
5 sections of different lengths, with poems about the Paris demimonde, World War 1, postwar European sketches, and love, memory and jealousy.
If there is a code to help the reader, it is expressed by the author himself in a short introduction as to approach these poems as one would approach the math problem "2 times 2 is 4" except for cummings the answer, as the books title asserts "is 5". Helpful? Maybe. Playful? Absolutely.
5 sections of different lengths, with poems about the Paris demimonde, World War 1, postwar European sketches, and love, memory and jealousy.
August 17, 2017
if i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind - if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy - if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
- let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death" -
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind - if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy - if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
- let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death" -
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
October 12, 2016
There is this thing about Cummings... I HAVE TO read his work out loud, otherwise I feel I'm not doing his writing a favor. There is such music in his composition, his choice of words.
is 5 -even when it didn't blow me away- is a fine example of his poetry and complex style.
I completely understand why he might seem pretentious to some, and to be perfectly honest I agree a little, but -not being a fan of traditional poetry myself- I appreciate that poems like these exist.
As I was reading I kept wondering how one would translate books like his without getting lost in translation (actually lost in translation). Puzzling.
is 5 -even when it didn't blow me away- is a fine example of his poetry and complex style.
I completely understand why he might seem pretentious to some, and to be perfectly honest I agree a little, but -not being a fan of traditional poetry myself- I appreciate that poems like these exist.
As I was reading I kept wondering how one would translate books like his without getting lost in translation (actually lost in translation). Puzzling.
February 2, 2020
I only connected with a few of these, and struggled with the New York thought fragments generally. Things improved as the collection went on, with the war section, then some more romantic pieces.
There’s an inscription in my (second hand) edition suggesting it was given as a present to someone who photographed their wedding, and since Kate and Joe say it’s ‘probably our favourite’, I wanted to enjoy it more...
“along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man
who(at a certain corner,suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.”
There’s an inscription in my (second hand) edition suggesting it was given as a present to someone who photographed their wedding, and since Kate and Joe say it’s ‘probably our favourite’, I wanted to enjoy it more...
“along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man
who(at a certain corner,suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.”
January 15, 2013
cummings, a poet who (often writing, usually thought of very highly though of dubious political leanings in my humble opinion after he visited the) is not one of my
that is pertaining to (me)in all of my dubious glory glory hallelujah
oh look the clouds are parting and that is one of my (favorite poets), nevertheless providing occasional (frustration, irritation, annoyance, get the picture)
yes lady, as in once in a while but not regularly enough to justify
the effort required
(insight)
If I wanted to break code I'd join the army
Fun have Soviet Union in the 30's
that is pertaining to (me)in all of my dubious glory glory hallelujah
oh look the clouds are parting and that is one of my (favorite poets), nevertheless providing occasional (frustration, irritation, annoyance, get the picture)
yes lady, as in once in a while but not regularly enough to justify
the effort required
(insight)
If I wanted to break code I'd join the army
Fun have Soviet Union in the 30's
February 14, 2013
Unforgivably awful, and this guy is supposed to be great? Not until the fifth block of poems is anything readable or noteworthy found. Yay! You can write poems sideways, split up words across the page to render them meaningless and force the reader to not only not enjoy your work, but try to sift through your tripe and put words back together, and, Yay for you! You can insert meaningless punctuation! Sorry, E.E., poetry is not supposed to be a frustrating exercise in trying to figure out WHICH FUCKING WORDS ARE WHICH.
February 12, 2018
"Is 5" was my first E. E. Cummings book, back in the day, pulled off my father's bookshelf no doubt and, equally doubtless, a wonder of playful experimentation to my high-schooled mind. The contained verse of cramped punctuation and scrambled letters/thoughts might not excite like it once did but the truly fine string of anti-war poems in Part Two along with "she being Brand" made re-reading this collection more than worthwhile.
March 19, 2015
Favorites:
it really must be Nice,never to
she being Brand
lis-ten you know what i mean when
my sweet old etcetera
if being mortised with a dream
since feeling is first
you being in love will tell who softly asks in love,
it is so long since my heart has been with yours
i am a beggar always who begs in your mind
it really must be Nice,never to
she being Brand
lis-ten you know what i mean when
my sweet old etcetera
if being mortised with a dream
since feeling is first
you being in love will tell who softly asks in love,
it is so long since my heart has been with yours
i am a beggar always who begs in your mind
June 25, 2011
I always gain a better appreciation of poet by reading a whole book of their poetry as opposed to just a select few. There were several poems in this collection that I loved. In particular: "Little ladies of Paris" and "Sunlight was over".
September 30, 2007
who doesn't like ee cummings.
January 22, 2008
Always has been one of my favorite poets...just a delight to read and let percolate.
April 13, 2008
man do i love this man. carry him around in my bag with my favourite pages memorized. (99-110 mostly.)
August 17, 2008
My favorite.
September 1, 2008
My first e.e. cummings collection
Includes:
Item
since feeling is first
i am a beggar always
Includes:
Item
since feeling is first
i am a beggar always
June 13, 2010
More smart poems, but some too obscure for me to love.
August 13, 2011
Same poems? Different cover. (I read a big orange book.)
January 16, 2013
First heard of e.e. cummings in 1975, and this is first collection of his poems I've heard out loud. Enjoyed him more now than 38 years ago, his creative gifts seem more remarkable.
February 9, 2018
Another masterpiece from Cummings. There are still misses but most of this selection is fabulous, especially from Four. A few standouts from that section: VII, VIII, X, XII, and XIV.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews