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Complete Poems, 1904-1962

4.37 of 5 stars 4.37 · rating details · 11,258 ratings · 163 reviews

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...more

Hardcover, 1136 pages

Published April 17th 1994 by Liveright Publishing Corporation (first published 1992)

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Apr 01, 2013 Marion rated it 5 of 5 stars

This tome will be on my "currently reading" list for quite a while. Yesterday my husband was watching an old James Caan movie, "The Gambler" when he paused it and said, "Step away from the computer. Now I'm going to give you three words from a poem (which he'd heard recited in the movie) and I want you to tell me the poet. The words were: "Buffalo Bill's defunct...". I immediately spit out, e. e. cummings. Then I went and grabbed this book and read him this poem which I'd memorized in high schoo...more

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May 01, 2013 Manny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: why-not-call-it-poetry, transcendent-experiences, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, older-men-younger-women

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 w...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Dolly Delightly rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of my colleagues – an avid reader of poetry – recently asked me why E.E. Cummings is not considered with the same reverence as the other Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg. I think, as I explained to him, it is probably because his verse is more often than not regarded as frivolous. And yet, in truth, Cummings wrote quite solemn poetry. Posterity has had fun with his legacy, which is somewhat unfortunate. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 14th October 1894, to pa...more One of my colleagues – an avid reader of poetry – recently asked me why E.E. Cummings is not considered with the same reverence as the other Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg. I think, as I explained to him, it is probably because his verse is more often than not regarded as frivolous. And yet, in truth, Cummings wrote quite solemn poetry. Posterity has had fun with his legacy, which is somewhat unfortunate. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 14th October 1894, to parents of old New England stock. Cummings once described his mother, Rebecca, as “the most amazing person” he had ever met and someone who had a judicious facility to “to understand how people really felt.” Speaking of his father, Edward, Cummings said he had loved him with a love which was in fact “worship” but noted that later it turned into one which incited “battle” as he realised his father’s shortcomings. A Harvard sociologist and later a Unitarian minister, Edward Cummings died in a locomotive-automobile accident in 1926. Cummings was greatly affected by his father’s death, despite the growing schism between them, and later celebrated his life in a poignant expression of filial veneration called my father moved through dooms of love (“through sames of am through haves of give/singing each morning out of each night/my father moved through depths of height”). The poem is perhaps one of Cummings’ most explicitly sentimental ones in dealing with affirmative love (“because my father lived his soul/love is the whole and more than all”) as typically his themes revolve around the difficulty of love and the hardship of understanding it as “the mystery of mysteries”.

Speaking about his craft Cummings once stated, “I did not decide to write poetry – I always wrote poetry.” It is thought that he began as early as 1904, while still at Cambridge Latin High School. Strongly encouraged by both his parents, Cummings pursued his interest in writing when he enrolled in Harvard in 1911 to study Classics and Literature. Four years later, he graduated magna cum laude, staying on an additional year to earn his MA in English. Cummings published his first poem in The Harvard Monthly in 1912, and within a year was elected to serve on its editorial board. During this time he studied leading 19th century English poets such as John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Percy Bysshe Shelley, thus much of his early work was derivative of his idols. He later discovered the works of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and the modernist thinkers inspired him to take a new and more progressive direction, including typographical wordplay, which eventually became his pennon. In 1925 a critic by the name of William Russell Clarke berated Cummings’ collection, XLI Poems, saying: “To say that Mr Cummings is a modern would be adding insult to injury. He is a supermodern – a super supermodern. His poetry is so new – so dazzlingly green and uripe and so amazingly unreconcilable with anything – that to attempt to interpret it is as useless as would be the measuring of the Indian Ocean with a tape line. If there is method in his madness, the method is not obvious.” Incredibly scathing in retrospect, but yet today it seems subversively praiseworthy of Cummings’ originality and daring radicalism.

Cummings is someone I discovered later in life. I sometimes wonder how the discovery came about but have no recollection. Whenever I think of him, however, the poem that springs to mind is always one and the same, i carry your heart with me. It is the latent romantic in me that knows the poem by heart and swoons every time, upon recollecting the following lines: “here is the deepest secret nobody knows/(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud/and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows/higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)/and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart/i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”. There is something immeasurably beautiful in the notion of everlasting devotion, which keeps one forever in someone’s heart unbeknown to the person or the world at large. In another poem, of the same theme, i love you much(most beautiful darling), Cummings simply says if everyone could feel the same about a beloved, as he does about his then “everyone certainly would (my most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love”. A lot of Cummings’ poems on the subject matter resonate with distant echoes of Keats and the Romantic tradition, presented above with a modern take reflecting both the poet’s ingenuity and influences.

In his playful, and more frivolous moments Cummings wrote lighter verse, epitomised by the likes of may i feel said he (“cccome?said he/ummm said she/you’re divine! said he/ you are Mine said she”), the boys i mean are not refined (“the boys i mean are not refined/they go with girls who buck and bite/they do not give a fuck for luck/they hump them thirteen times a night”) and Me up at does (“Me up at does/out of the floor/quietly Stare/a poisoned mouse/still who alive/is asking What have i done that/You wouldn’t have”). Cummings moved to New York in 1917 after securing employment with P.F. Collier, a company that published a magazine called Collier’s Weekly. It also had a commercial book distribution service, where Cummings worked. The fledgling poet described the work as “warming the chair for three and four hour intervals” thus in between his duties scribbled verse and read newspapers. On one such occasion after reading that William F. Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, had died Cummings wrote Buffalo Bill’s. A poem which is both an elegy and a plangent confrontation: “Buffalo Bill ‘s defunct/who used to/ride a watersmooth-silver/stallion/and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat/Jesus/he was a handsome man /and what i want to know is/how do you like your blueeyed boy/Mister Death.” A short time after that, and two weeks into his job, Cummings quit, and the rest became documented in his poetry and a flurry of biographies that followed his death of a stroke on September 3rd 1962, at the New Hampshire Memorial Hospital.

Irrespective of the general opinion about him, Cummings always made me contemplate the topics which I would not have done without him, such as when he said in but if a living dance upon dead minds that “love everywhere exploding maims and blinds/(but surely does not forget, perish, sleep cannot be/photographed, measured; disdains/the trivial labelling of punctual brains…/-Who wields a poem huger than the grave?/from only Whom shall time no refuge keep/though all the weird worlds must be opened?” And opened they were, in a way that no other poet opened them, and no other contemporary had the courage to. So, for that reason and many besides I will always remember Cummings as someone who wrote candidly, as someone who dared to use the word “fuck” in poetry, as someone who was an impertinent disciple and ploughed his own furrow, but also as someone who penned something I only felt once towards another, captured in the following lines: “your slightest look easily will unclose me/though i have closed myself as fingers”.(less)

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Mar 23, 2011 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

A friend of mine called me today to ask me to send him an e e cummings poem I used to have on my wall at work when I worked with him – oh, a decade ago. Neither of us thought it would be necessary for him to tell me which one, and so I sent him this one:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i...more

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Mar 04, 2008 Aimee rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone and their mom.

Shelves: the-treasure-chest

oh that i could give this book every star, star in the starry sky every gasp whisper and wonder, every dream of a dream unheard of, sentences, the roar of my bleating beating heart. every blinking winking of my parabolic eyelashes, my moon wrists skyscraper calves bridged feet and the city of wonder that he has at one time never time discovered. my little mouth in open joy knows not the path to the sly slippery of his genius. He that questions language knows its secrets.

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Jan 10, 2011 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very b...more

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Aug 01, 2007 Adrian rated it 5 of 5 stars

i used to read this book on the floor of the bookstore in Singing River Mall in Gautier Mississippi cuz i had no
money to buy it! then one Christmas my friend Andrea
bought it for me! i have not gotten tired of a single poem. reading his poetry is like reading it for the first time every time. fiercly original - startlingly beautiful.

i cant say enough about this man and his talent.

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Jul 04, 2012 Tom Menner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not that I like everything that e.e. cummings does (as I'm not typically fond of his syntactic stylistic manipulations), but some of my most favorite poems are by him - and so for that reason alone I give this collection high marks. I was familiar with his poem about Buffalo Bill, but it was really the Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" that exposed me to his work, as Michael Caine's character quotes "somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond" to his lover (or more exactly, his wif...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Kathy rated it 5 of 5 stars

omg. the definitive poems on things like cats and violets and moonrises and all things magnificent and natural, including twists of dogshit on the city sidewalk.traditional and modern and post-modern all at the same time. no wonder people have trouble reading him. he insists that you actually spend a little time, like, reading the poem. when realizing that he was also a painter, i realized that his wildly laid out poems were not designed simply to drive typesetter to drink...no...those poems are...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is on my "currently reading" list, becuase for me, this is a book you read in dribs and drabs. It's rather the same as if you don't want to O.D. on a potent drug, such is the Beauty of this volume.

When I think of

the word

poetry

this is one of the

definitions.
(see also
ts eliot,
stephen crane,
homer,
vergil,
tennyson,
and browning.
for starters)

sheer
(exquitiness unbounded)
utter
(language unfetterd)
magic

(i guess i just loves all them little letters)

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Jan 02, 2012 owl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, owl, poems, favorite-authors, mi-love

INDAH. itulah mengapa saya sangat mencintai puisi-puisi E.E Cummings. oleh syair cintanya yang membuai, saya pun takluk dan mencintainya sampai detik ini. rasanya tak pernah bosan bercinta setiap malam dengan kata-katanya yang lembut dan penuh cinta. seperti menemukan ruang berbagi perasaan; atas kemelut jiwa. seperti menemukan kata penghiburan; atas kesepian. seperti menemukan bahu untuk bersandar; atas kelelahan. seperti menemukan pelukan hangat; atas segala kesedihan. dan seperti menemukan te...more

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Sep 21, 2010 Esther rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, favorites

I love e.e.cummings' poetry. There is nothing like it. I can hardly review something so amazing, to be honest.

"there's time for laughing and there's time for crying -
for hoping for despair for peace for longing
- a time for growing and a time for dying:
a night for silence and a day for singing

but more than all(as your more than eyes
tell me) there is a time for timelessness" e.e.c.

And there's a time to shut up and just appreciate some amazing poetry.

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Dec 26, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, on-my-shelf, 2012-reading-challenge, review

My Thoughts:

This is kind of a book review, but not completely a book review. This is more along the lines of a couple paragraphs of me going off on the experience of reading every poem by the wonderful E.E. Cummings over all of 2012. That’s right. I read every E.E. Cummings poem in a year. I am quite proud of this.

I had read a few handfuls of E.E. Cummings poems before buying this book but I knew I was going to love it. And I wasn’t wrong. I was completely right. I LOVED THESE POEMS. I started m...more

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Aug 04, 2009 Patrick Gibson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

of all the collections of e e's works

this is the finest

complete, of course, why wouldn't it be?

"as is the sea marvelous
from god’s
hands which sent her forth
to sleep upon the world

and the earth withers
the moon crumbles
one by one
stars flutter into dust

but the sea
does not change
and she goes forth out of hands and
she returns into hands

and is with sleep….

love,
the breaking

of your
soul
upon
my lips"

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Sep 28, 2012 Blake rated it 5 of 5 stars

5 stars is not enough for this book. Cummings is a poet who should be put in with the giants of poetry, but will never be. His work is straight to the point, succinct, never frivolous, but seemingly woven from the threads inside the human heart, beautiful, intimate, yet seemingly grand in scale. Sadly, others do not consider his work on the same levels as the masters. But I will always consider him a master of the human heart.

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Mar 16, 2008 John-Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is mammoth, and I regret I have yet to read it fully. cummings can be so frustrating that it is rather impossible to read this book from front to back like a good spy novel. But, his imagery is beautiful, and on occasion it feels as if your mind has grafted into his when everything begins to click into place... even when you have no idea what the hell he's talking about.
Right now, I'm about 40% of the way through, and that's okay. If I die at the age of 55, I'll probably have finished...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Cassondra Combs rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: currently-and-always-reading

e.e. may be my favorite! I usually read a poem or two a night, when I'm ready for bed. I have read his entire collection. If you're not absolutely a romantic, and if you can't accept sometimes that grammar isn't always right, that words and letters are bendable, rearrange-able, perhaps e.e. is a stretch for you. But I love him, and I can feel when I read his poems.

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Jan 19, 2010 Audrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is wonderful because of it's complexity and variety. Some of the poems are difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Others are easily interpreted and will touch the reader deeply and permanently. The anthology is best read in a bed for two, where each sentiment can be augmented by intimate conversation. It is not surprising that this book has facilitated some of the most precious moments of my adult life.

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Jul 22, 2012 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just ordered this book, because "Buffalo Bill's Defunct" keeps running through my mind:

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

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Apr 01, 2010 Kitty rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a book I read, re-read and work with when I want a little humor a creative linguistic twist,
a book to pick up, open randomly to a poem and before I know it, if I have been down in the dumps I'm automatically out of the dumps with my neurons dancing in my head asking for -- just a couple more poems, just a couple more.

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Jun 12, 2009 Alton rated it 5 of 5 stars

cummings is my favorite poet. Have purchased three copies of this book for friends who want to read poetry but don't know where to begin. Also worth checking out is cummings reading his own works. My friend lent me an audio cassette of cummings reading selected poems and it is equally compelling. Absolute genius.

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Jun 06, 2012 Jim Asher rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am continually amazed at the genius of Cummings. You know how you see more and more details when you see a movie for a second or third time? The same is true in reading and re-reading the poetry of Cummings -- with each new reading my mind sees more and more details and possibilities.

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Mar 30, 2008 TeacherMrLoria rated it 4 of 5 stars

What is so refreshing about EE Cummings is his joyful perspective on life. While his style and form is not traditional, many of his main themes are (love, sex, life, death, childhood, the role of an individual in relation to others, the search for ones true self).
Cummings is an iconoclast who rejects many traditional forms of control that limit individualism, but he does not devote his attention to an anger towards these forces. Several of his poems treat them dismissively, intellectually, and i...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Christian rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the most comprehensive collection of EE Cummings poems you will find and it does not disappoint. But look through it with some tea and time on your hands, because most of his poetry does not resemble his most famous poems. Still, they are compelling and unique.

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Jun 23, 2009 Mara added it

I read this last summer and fall and Iit made me realise what a great and fresh poet ee still is. I ususally think he mostly wrote about love but there is a bigger range than I thought and it is a book to read over time. I guess that is true for all poetry

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Sep 14, 2007 Cendri rated it 5 of 5 stars

i used to hate e.e. cummings, but then i realized he was brilliant.

The first of his poems I liked, though certainly not the first encountered, was "i thank you god for most this amazing day." How should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You? Of course they can, and do, and rightly so, yet the beauty of the line is enough to make you wonder. But it has to be read just so.

Even after that first revelation, it took m...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I hadn't read any of ee commings since graduate school and so I had simply forgotten how fine a poet he was. His inventiveness and poetic oddities sometimes receive more attention than his beautifully lyrical poems. I re-read "My father moved though dooms of love..." and was so touched by that. I enjoyed almost every poem in this collection.

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Dec 28, 2012 Rae rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite book of poems, I could sit on a picnic blanket in the sun all day and fantasize about this poet telling me, "since feeling is first, who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you..."

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Aug 03, 2008 Acid rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: modern poetry fans

these poems speak for themselves... as do all great poems...what can I illuminate that a poet in his own element and words would give a more accurate picture....so here is a poem that I really like from the collection...
HOKKU
I care not greatly
Should the world remember me
In some tommorrow.

There is a journey,
And who is for the long road
Loves not to linger.

For him the night calls,
Out of the dawn and sunset
Who has made poems.

this example is lacking the form that most of ee cummings poems have...they...more

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Jun 27, 2009 Rebecca Blackson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I love In Just Spring, and All in Green My Love Went Riding, and also this one: (it's just beautiful)

when life is quite through with
by: e.e. cummings

when life is quite through with
and leaves say alas,
much is to do
for the swallow,that closes
a flight in the blue;

when love's had his tears out,
perhaps shall pass
a million years
(while a bee dozes
on the poppies, the dears;

when all's done and said,and
under the grass
lies her head
by oaks and roses
deliberated.)

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About E.E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings, popularly known as e.e. cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright. His body of work encompasses more than 900 poems, several plays and essays, numerous drawings, sketches, and paintings, as well as two novels. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry, as well as one of the most popular.

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Quotes from Complete Poems, 1904-1962

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile” — 288 people liked it

“since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid” — 131 people liked it

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