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A review by shannen_m
e. e. cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings
4.0
I got this massive brick of a collection purely off the strength of "I carry your heart with me" which is one of my favourite poems - ever, out of anything, and I'm tempted to rate at 5 stars based off the strength of it too. It's just so outstandingly beautiful to me.
But overall; the very experimental page space/punctuation poems were a hit or a miss for me, in that very "poetry is subjective [shrug]" sort of way, and it was funny over the 1000 or so pages to see the patterns in his favoured words (my dude loves "illimitable" and "april" among others). But colour is so present, and there are so many sweet collections of words that, even if they don't make a literal sense, are grouped so evocatively. It took a minute to get used to, but there's something very magical about letting a lot of his work wash over you in images. They feel unfinished in the most positive sense - they're ongoing. They're not *created*, they're *creative*. So many imaginative jumping off points. I'll definitely be revisiting all my scattered highlights.
But overall; the very experimental page space/punctuation poems were a hit or a miss for me, in that very "poetry is subjective [shrug]" sort of way, and it was funny over the 1000 or so pages to see the patterns in his favoured words (my dude loves "illimitable" and "april" among others). But colour is so present, and there are so many sweet collections of words that, even if they don't make a literal sense, are grouped so evocatively. It took a minute to get used to, but there's something very magical about letting a lot of his work wash over you in images. They feel unfinished in the most positive sense - they're ongoing. They're not *created*, they're *creative*. So many imaginative jumping off points. I'll definitely be revisiting all my scattered highlights.