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katiez0314's review
4.0
Cummings does not disappoint in his usual subject areas. I have always loved his Seasons, and he hits love and passion in this collection with a dose of grit and crudeness that brought humor into his writing.
joncav07's review against another edition
4.0
Entertaining.
I found EE Cumming’s writing unique and interesting. I recently read Shelly’s poems which I didn’t really care for, but I enjoyed these poems.
I found EE Cumming’s writing unique and interesting. I recently read Shelly’s poems which I didn’t really care for, but I enjoyed these poems.
tharina's review
4.0
Around the Year in 52 Books 2021: A book whose title and author both contain the letter "u".
darwin8u's review
4.0
A quick ode to E.E. with ampersands & all( built on the sturdy body of his poem*XV):
come poetry to my crumbling soul
which with nonfiction has conversed in vain,
O noiselessly take thy rhythmic toll,
for iambic feet this frantic heart is fain;
try me with thy accents which have seduced
the acoustic meatus of the deaf & dead,
feed gentility me earwormperused
by whom the quickening tug of time is fed:
& if i like not what thou singest me
to him let me complain, whose page is set
evolving poetgods struggle to be free
with the astounding everlasting bet —
but if i like, i'll post in goodreaders hands
what no man feels, no woman understands.
I loved E.E. Cummings since my youth. He was a model for seduction, for using poems to stir young girls to action (Cummings poems + Ed Weston peppers + Cherry Slurpee + Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was the aphrodisiakon potion recipe of my youth). He framed for me the ability to bend words, grammar, and meter to one's own function. He inspired sonnets, songs, solicitations. I recently read his novel [b:The Enormous Room|144896|The Enormous Room|E.E. Cummings|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172167333s/144896.jpg|285621] and since it IS national poetry month and it seems a dense number of poems from E.E. Cummings's T&C deal with spring and April, this gave me an excuse to go back to his Firmage-edited [b:Complete Poems, 1904-1962|26596|Complete Poems, 1904-1962|E.E. Cummings|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355093052s/26596.jpg|175882] (which before I've used to find favorites, but never read cover to cover).
So, at the notquitebeginning of April, I decided to read E.E. Cummings from beginning to end. Every book (well perhaps not every every), every poem. 'Tulips & Chimneys' (published originally as 'Tulips and Chimneys'). Cummings's original title was ignored by the publisher, who changed the ampersand to the word "and". Bastard. That is what happens when you are young, and your sway is thin. So, my next piece of Cummings will be '& [And]' which collected other of his poems that weren't originally included in Tulips and Chimneys, but later added to Tulips & Chimneys. If that is a bit confusing, that is ok. It is the words that matter and the meter (and I guess too the ampersand). The meaning will make itself clear soon & enough.
All in all, I like this first collection. It showed Cummings blossoming as an artist and poet. It shows his experimental approach, influenced by other modern artists such as Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Stravinsky, and Ezra Pound. It is fun reading his early stuff in sequence, as sequences go, because the readeryou starts to see this thing called E.E. Cummings become hetoHE. His first pieces seem a bit dilettante and thesaurus-heavy, but by the end, youreader see the boybecome the manIS. The artist has bloomed. There is confidence and a voice. It reminded me, in a narrow way, of reading Dickens' [b:The Pickwick Papers|229432|The Pickwick Papers|Charles Dickens|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360795072s/229432.jpg|3315230]: a first pieceglimpse that shows all the evidence of greatness but with the pregnant and heavy stretch marks of growth.
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