This is the first selection from the poems of e.e. cummings to be published since 1959, five years before the poet's death. The 156 poems selected by cummings' biographer are arranged in twelve sections, each preceded by an illustration by cumming
At the time of his death in 1962 E.E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited Bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. He is recognized on the one hand as the author of some of the most beautiful lyric poems written in the English language, and on the other as one of the most inventive American poets of his time. This is the first selection from the poems of E.E. Cummings to be published since 1959, three years before his death. The one hundred and fifty-six poems selected by Richard S. Kennedy, Cummings's biographer (Dreams in the Mirror), are arranged in twelve sections, with introductions by Kennedy for each section. Also included are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published. The selection includes most of the favorites plus many fresh and surprising examples of Cummings's several poetic styles. The corrected texts established by George J. Firmage have been used throughout.
The one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's biographer, Richard S. Kennedy, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets. Also featured are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published.
No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader.--Randall Jarrell
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was among the most influential, widely read, and revered modernist poets. He was also a playwright, a painter, and a writer of prose. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard University and, during World War I, served with an ambulance corps in France. He spent three months in a French detention camp and subsequently wrote The Enormous Room, a highly acclaimed criticism of World War I. After the war, Cummings returned to the States and published his first collection of poetry, Tulips & Chimneys, which was characterized by his innovative style: pushing the boundaries of language and form while discussing love, nature, and war with sensuousness and glee. He spent the rest of his life painting, writing poetry, and enjoying widespread popularity and success.
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Pub Date: August 17, 2007
0.51" H x 8.26" L x 5.44" W
208 pages
paperback