Books › Poems
Poems
First published 1960 · 1102 pages
A joyful, rule-breaking celebration of love, spring, and the boundless possibilities of language.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stepping into a sudden, sun-drenched spring day where all the rules of gravity and grammar have been joyfully suspended. The experience is deeply visual and rhythmic, asking you to slow down and let the scattered letters and broken syntax wash over you until their hidden melodies emerge. It is a meandering, deeply romantic journey that swings between brash, irreverent rebellion against conformity and the most tender, earnest declarations of love. The atmosphere is vibrant and alive, crackling with a bohemian energy that feels both timeless and radically modern. This is a book for readers who delight in linguistic puzzles, who want to see language turned inside out, and who crave poetry that celebrates the sheer, unbridled ecstasy of being alive.
- Mood
- whimsical
- tender
- vibrant
- sun-drenched
- Tone
- playful
- irreverent
- romantic
- earnest
- rebellious
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- romantic love · rebellion against conformity · the beauty of nature · joy of the present moment · individualism
- The writing
- Radically inventive and visually striking, the language breaks every rule of syntax and capitalization to create rhythmic, typographic surprises.
- The arc
- The journey swings from playful, thumb-nosing rebellion to profound, breathless awe at love and the natural world.
- Who it's for
- Readers who delight in linguistic puzzles and crave deeply romantic, rule-breaking poetry will devour this collection.
Content notes
- mild sexual innuendo
- wartime themes
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
Books like Poems
See why they match
The Poems of Emily Dickinson Volume IIEmily DickinsonA quiet, startlingly intimate journey into the depths of the human soul, delivered in fragments of brilliant, unconventional verse.
Collected PoemsSylvia PlathA blistering, visceral descent into the depths of the human psyche, where personal anguish is forged into razor-sharp, mythic art.
Poems 1962-2012Louise GlückA stark, deceptively simple journey through myth, nature, and the paradox of a mortal body producing enduring art.
Open me carefullyEmily DickinsonA deeply intimate glimpse into the lifelong passion and creative partnership that fueled one of America's greatest poets.
Leaves of GrassWalt WhitmanA sprawling, ecstatic hymn to the human body, the American landscape, and the divine spark within every blade of grass.
Howl, and Other PoemsAllen GinsbergA breathless, jazz-fueled scream against conformity that finds the sacred in the gutter.