E. E. Cummings Book Reviews
E. E. Cummings by Susan Cheever Book Summary
From the author of American Bloomsbury, Louisa May Alcott, and Home Before Dark, a major reassessment of the life and work of the novelist, painter, and playwright considered to be one of America’s preeminent twentieth-century poets. At the time of his death in 1962, at age sixty-eight, he was, after Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in the United States.
E. E. Cummings was and remains controversial. He has been called “a master” (Malcolm Cowley); “hideous” (Edmund Wilson). James Dickey called him a “daringly original poet with more vitality and more sheer uncompromising talent than any other living American writer.”
In Susan Cheever’s rich, illuminating biography we see Cummings’s idyllic childhood years in Cambridge, Massachusetts; his Calvinist father—distinguished Harvard professor and sternly religious minister of the Cambridge Congregational Church; his mother—loving, attentive, a source of encouragement, the aristocrat of the family, from Unitarian writers, judges, and adventurers.
We see Cummings—slight, agile, playful, a product of a nineteenth-century New England childhood, bred to be flinty and determined; his love of nature; his sense of fun, laughter, mimicry; his desire from the get-go to stand conventional wisdom on its head, which he himself would often do, literally, to amuse.
At Harvard, he roomed with John Dos Passos; befriended Lincoln Kirstein; read Latin, Greek, and French; earned two degrees; discovered alcohol, fast cars, and burlesque at the Old Howard Theater; and raged against the school’s conservative, exclusionary upper-class rule by A. Lawrence Lowell.
In Cheever’s book we see that beneath Cummings’s blissful, golden childhood the strains of sadness and rage were already at play. He grew into a dark young man and set out on a lifelong course of rebellion against conventional authority and the critical establishment, devouring the poetry of Ezra Pound, whose radical verses pushed Cummings away from the politeness of the traditional nature poem toward a more adventurous, sexually conscious form.
We see that Cummings’s self-imposed exile from Cambridge—a town he’d come to hate for its intellectualism, Puritan uptightness, racism, and self-righteous xenophobia—seemed necessary for him as a man and a poet. Headstrong and cavalier, he volunteered as an ambulance driver in World War I, working alongside Hemingway, Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford . . . his ongoing stand against the imprisonment of his soul taking a literal turn when he was held in a makeshift prison for “undesirables and spies,” an experience that became the basis for his novel, The Enormous Room.
We follow Cummings as he permanently flees to Greenwich Village to be among other modernist poets of the day—Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas—and we see the development of both the poet and his work against the backdrop of modernism and through the influences of his contemporaries: Stein, Amy Lowell, Joyce, and Pound. Cheever’s fascinating book gives us the evolution of an artist whose writing was at the forefront of what was new and daring and bold in an America in transition.
(With 28 pages of black-and-white images.)
Book Name | E. E. Cummings |
Genre | Biographies & Memoirs |
Author | Susan Cheever |
Published | 11 February 2014, Tuesday |
Language | English |
E-Book Size | 12.74 MB |
E. E. Cummings (Susan Cheever) Book Reviews 2024
We transfer money over €4 billion every month. We enable individual and business accounts to save 4 million Euros on bank transfer fees. Want to send free money abroad or transfer money abroad for free? Free international money transfer!
Did you know that you can earn 25 USD from our site just by registering? Get $25 for free by joining Payoneer!
Download Link | Book Format |
e-e-cummings-ebook.pdf | |
e-e-cummings-ebook.epub | EPUB |
e-e-cummings-ebook.kindle | KINDLE |
E. E. Cummings E-book (PDF, PUB, KINDLE) Download
E. E. Cummings ebook e-e-cummings (12.74 MB) download new links will be update!
E. E. Cummings Similar Books
Book Name | Score | Reviews | Price |
Born a Crime | 4.5/5 | 4,924 | $14.99 |
The Life of Abraham Lincoln | 4/5 | 786 | Free |
Fear | 4/5 | 1,851 | $13.99 |
The Glass Castle | 4.5/5 | 4,012 | $13.99 |
Night | 4.5/5 | 3,987 | $11.99 |
Enhance sleep, vision, cognition, flexibility, energy, long-range health and more. Performance Lab CORE Formulas support all aspects of human performance, across all walks of life. Boosts work performance and productivity with nootropics for focus, multitasking under stress, creative problem-solving and more.
Book Name | Score | Reviews | Price |
Louisa May Alcott | 4/5 | 5 | $14.99 |
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed | 0/5 | 0 | $16.99 |
Desire | 0/5 | 0 | $11.99 |
Drinking in America | 0/5 | 0 | $9.99 |
Note Found in a Bottle | 0/5 | 0 | $13.99 |
Summary of E. E. Cummings by Susan Cheever
The E. E. Cummings book written by Susan Cheever was published on 11 February 2014, Tuesday in the Biographies & Memoirs category. A total of 198 readers of the book gave the book 0 points out of 5.
Book Name | Author | Price |
Klee Wyck | Emily Carr | Free |
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete | Ulysses Simpson Grant | Free |
La misionera de China | Monique Villen | Free |
George Muller My Journal | George Müller | Free |
Men of Invention and Industry | Samuel Smiles | Free |
Coinbase is the world's most trusted place to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Open an account today, and if you buy or sell $100 or more of crypto, you'll receive $10 worth of free Bitcoin!
Book Name | Author | Price |
American Sniper | Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice | $9.99 |
Steve Jobs | Walter Isaacson | $16.99 |
The Daddy Diaries | Andy Cohen | $3.99 |
Endgame | Omid Scobie | $14.99 |
Max Factor | Fred E. Basten | $1.99 |
Jasper is the generative AI platform for business that helps your team create content tailored for your brand 10X faster, wherever you work online.
Please wait! E. E. Cummings book comments loading...
Susan Cheever - E. E. Cummings Discussions & Comments
Have you read this book yet? What do you think about E. E. Cummings by Susan Cheever book? Ask the bookpedia.co community a question about E. E. Cummings!