Collected Poems

by Ernest Hemingway

Collection of poems written between 1922 and 1929, and originally published in Paris.

Genres: Poetry

28 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 1972

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did you know Hemingway wrote poems? Me either! This is a little chapbook that collects short poems he published in the 20s. Most of the poems are pretty bad, some purposefully so because he is making fun of other poets. Near the end of the collection there are a few that actually express real sentiments. If you're a big fan of Hemingway, you might really enjoy this. If you're a big fan of poetry, you might not.

[Lakshmi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hemingway writes like a misogynistic creep with a hint of poetic talent. This collection was a waste of time.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok. He admittedly did not strive to be a poet.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

If he'd stuck with poetry, who knows, he might have been a great one. 3.5 stars.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's be truthful: As "literary" poetry, it stinks. But if poetry had a punk rock genre in the 1920s, this would be it. It's the work of a disillusioned man in his early twenties whose legs were ripped by shrapnel on the Italian front — while still a teenager! — in World War One, wounds he would carry the rest of his life. And then his first love, the woman he intended to marry, had dumped him for an Italian officer (who subsequently dumped her). Hemingway was a hurt, angry man, barely beyond a teen, when he wrote poems like this:

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of sh*t that it demanded.

(Hemingway didn't use the asterisk.)

[Mark Nenadov]

Collected poems of Ernest Hemingway. A small, short, snappy, edgy collection. Quite unpretentious. Two other reviewers said it best when they said: "if poetry had a punk rock genre in the 1920s, this would be it" and "So bad it's good"

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not good!

[Joshlynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's vindicating to know that, once upon a time, one of the greatest writers in the English language wrote like I did in sophomore year of high school. Thank God I didn't read these poems back then.

[Rebecca Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it. Not great art...but kind of a spoof on art.

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

there is a good reason why H is not known for his poetry!