Weekend Reading: E.E. Cummings 100 Selected Poems

In honor of my daughter, who is home for two weeks before moving into her summer apartment and beginning an internship with Atria Books, our reading recommendation this week is poetry, from her favorite poet E. E. Cummings.

She’s an English major like her mom. But while I favored 19th and 20th c. British novels, my dear daughter is focused on poetry. She loves poetry. I like it well enough, but my preference is for old romantic types, Byron, Keats, Shelley. I went through a big Shelley phase. Her taste leans a tad more modern. And oddly enough, when I looked this up on Goodreads, the first thing I saw was her five star recommendation, the first of many five star recommendations to come from my Publicity intern daughter, no doubt.

From Goodreads:

E.E. Cummings is without question one of the major poets of this century, and this volume, first published in 1959, is indispensable for every lover of modern lyrical verse. It contains one hundred of Cummings’s wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. These poems exhibit all the extraordinary lyricism, playfulness, technical ingenuity, and compassion for which Cummings is famous. They demonstrate beautifully his extrapolations from traditional poetic structures and his departures from them, as well as the unique synthesis of lavish imagery and acute artistic precision that has won him the adulation and respect of critics and poetry lovers everywhere.

Do you love poetry? Are you known to read volumes of it? Are your tastes modern or old-fashioned? Have you ever written a poem? (Limericks and Haikus count). 

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