Tulips & Chimneys

by E.E. Cummings

Book Overview

Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962), a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard University graduate, is best known for his rejection of traditional poetic forms. As e. e. cummings, he... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871401657
• ISBN13: 9780871401656
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A unique quality that was all his own

The poetry of E.E. Cummings is a pure example of the what the modernist period represented in American literature. Having been a volunteer with the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps and prisoner of war during World War I, Cummings's poetry resonate his pre-war and aftermath experience as well as the artists and writers that influenced his work, Cubism and Post-Impressionism and Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg. This is exhibited in one of Cummings's first collection of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys, which is organized in Cummings's original manuscript form with the over 100 poems in tact. Published in 1923 but revised throughout the years to get it as close to how Cummings arranged the poems, readers will see a display of fragmented and unconventional style of avant-garde prose in their most unusual organization in terms of grammar and punctuation that distinguishes his poetry. Or as avant-garde critic Edmund Wilson once attested, "eccentric punctuation" (xvii). However, the underlying meaning of each poem is comprehensible with the delicacy of eroticism, "--GON splashes sink", benevolent innocence, "where did you go" and sweeping and epic prose, "Epithalamion" and "Puella Mea," which all came from the creative mind of a 25 year old Cummings. And with most works of poetry there is a certain imagery that is conveyed with each distinct poem that resembles a work of art. All of the poems and sonnets have a significance of their own, but readers may find several that may become their favorites. For those who enjoy reading poetry or the curious, Tulips and Chimneys may be the place to start when encountering the poetry of E.E. Cummings.

Cummings' best !

This book stands as Cummings' most playful spontaneous ecstatic intimate beautiful poems ever written. Many of his later collections are too directly philosophical (all the abstractions can really make the poems more of a complex thinking exercise rather than a felt experience) & too syntactically disjointed (disjointed to the point in which frustration replaces giddy enjoyment) in my opinion. however This collection is honestly COMPELLING & practical while maintaining the experimental edge--beautiful & true & honest & surreal & magical & beyond Anything . The last 30 pages of this book (the ' & ' manuscript) contain some of the best poems ever written in the English language I'm serious

The Picasso of Poetry

Having glanced at his work in the past, I didn't think I'd like Cummings' work at all. It seemed 'pastiche poetry', pretty words smattered all over a page with no connecting thread. I couldn't have been further from the truth; even his shortest pieces ("I Am Going To Utter A Tree..") Cummings sometimes archiac style is unmistakably his own. Some of his "Unrealities" blend poetic word salads with ingenious covert metaphor: ("be these haunters of dreams always demurely half smiling from cool faces..") Cummings outdoes the beats with his crazed verbal exhortations to life. Simply reading or glancing at a few pages of his work makes one want to write. Above all, he is fun and certainly beyond imitation.

cummings en process

Tulips and Chimneys are poems which begin early in cummings carreer but are stunning in their simplicity, clarity and maturity. His erotocism, imagery and sensitivity to the beauty of nature manifest themselves in the juxtaposition of thought and its connection to his relationship to the physical environment as he has experienced it. I love his flow of sense as it metamorphosizes through his words. It is never without deliberate meaning. Tulips and Chimneys is a book to carry with you in bookbag or backpack or car or leave at work or in the bathroom or wherever you have a minute to restore your sense of wonder; of the wonder of what one person's mind can do to delight.