Selected Poems

One of my all-time favorite poets. I'm not that much into poetry, but Cummings' work is insightful and spiritual, and beautiful. I strongly recommend reading any of his works.

E.e. Cummings (or "e.e. cummings") was one of the original American nonconformists. As a soldier during World War I, he was clapped behind bars (in a French prison, weirdly enough) for noncooperation with the American unit he'd been sent to Europe with. (This is the subject of his prose work "The Enormous Room.") Unfortunately, the part of Cummings's nonconformity that he's best known for is just his defiance of traditional grammar and punctuation rules. Actually, Cummings's originality extends to his diction, which is often quite effective. But the best Cummings poems are wonderful for reasons that transcend any kind of impish punctuation or syntax. His love poems have a special quality of tenderness; they're some of the best in the language. His satire is first-rate and surprisingly relevant to the present era. If you don't know "I Sing of Olaf," you have something to look forward to. Cummings's poetry and his point of view are unique and in some cases even courageous. He has the spirit of a principled artist. This little volume of selected poems includes some of his best work.

I don't normally finish books of poetry, but I finished this one from start to finish. I happen to think ee cummings is very creative, and that, in itself, is worthy of introspection. He's just different, and it's interesting to see him go from the bubbly cheerfulness of childhood in the beginning to the sour, jaded, pessimistic and political aspect of the end. There's a bit of cubism in there as well, which was both challenging and intriguing. I recommend even for those not normally disposed to poetry.

The look and feel of this slim yet powerful volume of poetry is absolutely gorgeous! It’s a beautiful looking book. And, the poems are a journey in and of themselves. The paper feels delicious. And the font is easy to read! Because no matter how beautiful a book may look from the outside, there must be ease of reading that which is on the inside. I rate this particular edition, five stars! Please, it is a must have for your collection.

One of the badges of culture I acquired when I was an impressionable eighteen-year-old was "The Complete Poems" of E. E. Cummings. I found a few I liked, most notably "Buffalo Bill's / defunct", but for the most part I was bewildered. Cummings was a poetry god at the time (up there with Robert Frost), and the fact that most of his poems did absolutely nothing for me surely had something to do with my general dismissal of poetry for much of my adult life.Over the past few years, sensing that perhaps I had given poetry short shrift, I have been reading a book of poems every month or so. With a better grounding, I decided to re-visit E. E. Cummings. But my old book of the complete poems from the 1960s was missing from my library shelves, probably appropriated by one of my sons (I wish him well in digesting it). So, in its place, I bought this edition of SELECTED POEMS, edited by Richard S. Kennedy.There is a lot to be said for it. It includes 155 poems. Editor Kennedy groups and presents them according to subject, roughly construed -- for example, "A Child's World", "Love and Its Mysteries", "The Dimensions of Being Human", "Myths and Allegories", and "Targets of Satire". This approach provided me much easier access to Cummings than slogging through the poems in chronological order. Kennedy introduces each of the twelve sections of the book with a short commentary. Together, the commentaries and the brief Introduction make this SELECTED POEMS an ideal vehicle for getting to know Cummings and his poetry. (Moreover, Kennedy no doubt cherry-picked the poems, such that the 155 included here represent the cream of Cummings's oeuvre.)After going through SELECTED POEMS I have a much better appreciation of Cummings and his work. Even so, I still don't like much of it, and some of Cummings's trademark mannerisms remain annoying. I think his experimentation with applying the principles of Cubism (breaking up and restructuring) to poetry was misguided. I don't care for the "visual" approach he employs in some of his poems (to me, poetry as a medium is grounded on sound). Too many of the poems contained in this volume are too much the same; for all his experimentation, Cummings does not display great range in style. The poetry is too choppy (similar to J. D. Salinger's parentheses- and comma-laden prose). Finally, I am more annoyed than ever by Cummings's willful disregard for the conventions of punctuation -- particularly his practice of eliminating the spaces after a comma, semi-colon, or colon, or before and after parentheses. Several poems would have been much more effective without the idiosyncratic and anarchic punctuation (for instance, "O sweet spontaneous").For all that, Cummings had a good grasp of more traditional poetic techniques. He had a genius for word- and phrase-smithing. For example: Spring, "when the world is puddle-wonderful", or "the square virtues and the oblong sins", or "existing's tricky:but to live's a gift". He had a poet's sense of rhythm and rhyme, something that many of his followers in contemporary, experimental verse sorely lacked. (I still think that "Buffalo Bill's / defunct" is one of the finest pieces of free verse ever composed, as well as one of the relatively few that is sublimely poetic.) And, as many of the poems in SELECTED POEMS demonstrate, Cummings handled the sonnet form very well. Here is one such example, written of his exposure in 1917 (while serving as a driver in an ambulance corps) to the Parisian world of brothels and prostitutes:goodby Betty,don't remember mepencil your eyes dear and have a good timewith the tall tight boys at Tabari's,keep your teeth snowy,stick to beer and lime,wear dark,and where your meeting breasts are roundhave roses darling,it's all i ask of you--but that when light fails and this sweet profoundParis moves with lovers,two and twobound for themselves,when passionately duskbrings softly down the perfume of the world(and just as smaller stars begin to huskheaven)you,you exactly paled and curledwith mystic lips take twilight where i know:proving to Death that Love is so and so.

The book came in great condition and I love the way to poetry is split into different themes and sections

A perfect selection of poems and just enough background info to give a really clear idea about E.E. cummings and his work. What a genius! I love the way that the reader has to enter his poems in order to even read some of them because of the syntax. Being in the Cummings flow is like being in another mindset and makes you look at reality differently. Very yummy poetry.

Wonderfully formated, skillfully curated, and excellently bound, Selected Poems of EE Cummings is a fantastic little book for those interested in diving into the works of the famous poet.

Such a beautiful bookSo happy with it

Muy bueno, la impresión (calidad de las hojas) no es la gran cosa, pero qué importa cuando de contenido tiene la poesía de E. E. Cummings? Brutal, gracias!

L'avis ne porte que sur l'édition, pas sur les poèmes eux-mêmes. Une bonne sélection, organisée par thèmes, qui donne un bon aperçu de l’œuvre de Cummings, mais deux réserves :-l'appareil critique reste limité ; bon courage pour comprendre certains poèmes, dont certains décrits par l'éditeur comme "ne nécessitant pas d'explication particulière"-les dates de publication des poèmes ne sont indiquées que dans l'index, ce qui fait qu'à la lecture, on ne parvient pas forcément à cerner l'évolution du style du poète, comme les époques sont mélangéesMalgré ces deux réserves, une très belle découverte pour moi !

e.e.cummings ist einer der größten amerikanischen Dichter des vergangenen Jahrhunderts. Empfehlenswert.

Print is a readable size and contents exactly what I was looking for