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ViVa
Fresh and candid, but turns earthy, defiant, and romantic, E. E. Cummings' poems celebrate the uniqueness of each individual, the need to protest the dehumanizing force of organizations, and the exuberant power of love. First published in 1931, ViVa contains four of E. E. Cummings' most experimental poems as well as some of his most memorable. The volume includes such no-famous celebrations as "i sing of Olaf glad and big" and "if there are any heavens my mother will (all be herself) have," along with such favorites as "Space being (don't forget to remember) Curved," "a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon," and "somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond."
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
About the author
E.E. Cummings
263 books3,893 followersEdward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/e-...
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 15, 2017
& the whole garden will bow)
- E.E. Cummings, W(ViVa)
W(ViVa)
Some aging poems tripstrip &
other S often same staystuck
to elevate in experience Cumming's
grand playful experiments.
heart, wraps (earshandsmouth
eyes)round poems of love&loneliness
art carved in life&death, w/mother's
meter built on gardenwalls of stars.
distance falls back, graceless &hard
rheumatic memories grasp earthen cups
of poetry's hotwords & fingering counts
icefinal calories of EE's last entropy.
- E.E. Cummings, W(ViVa)
W(ViVa)
Some aging poems tripstrip &
other S often same staystuck
to elevate in experience Cumming's
grand playful experiments.
heart, wraps (earshandsmouth
eyes)round poems of love&loneliness
art carved in life&death, w/mother's
meter built on gardenwalls of stars.
distance falls back, graceless &hard
rheumatic memories grasp earthen cups
of poetry's hotwords & fingering counts
icefinal calories of EE's last entropy.
September 22, 2019
Cummings has some fine images and sentiments (eg. XXX, XLIII, XLIV, XLIX, LVII). His experimental syntax detracts from these as often as it enhances them.
August 9, 2012
Poetry is often overrated or extremely beautiful. If you're seeking beautiful poetry, I would recommend this book. Sprinkled in through these pages are fantastic collections of words. When I find words like these, I can't explain the pleasurable feeling I get inside. Though some poems here are difficult to read, the beauty of others makes up for it immediately.
January 26, 2022
,mean-
hum
a)now
(nit
y unb
uria
ble fore(hurry
into
heads are
legs think wrists
argue)short(eyes do
ban hands angle
scoot bulbs marry a become)
ened
(to is
see!so
long door
golf slam bridge train shriek
chewing whistles hugest
to
morrow from smiles sin
k
ingly ele
vator glide pinn
)pu(
acle to
rubber)tres(plants how grin
ho)cen(tel
und
ead the
not stroll
living spawn imitate)ce(re
peat
credo fais do
do neighbours re babieswhile;
- I
* * *
oil tel duh woil doi sez
dooyuh unnurs tanmih eesez pullih nizmus tash,oi
dough un giv uh shid oi sez. Tom
oidoughwuntuh doot,butoiguttuh
braikyooz,datswut eesez tuhmih. (Nowoi askyuh
woodundat maik yurarstoin
green? Oilsaisough.)--Hool
spairruh luckih? Thangzkeed. Mairsee.
Muh jax awl gawn. Fur Croi saik
ainnoughbudih gutnutntuhplai?HAI
yoozwidduhpoimnuntwaiv un duhyookuhsumpnruddur
givusuhtoonunduhphugnting- II
* * *
poor But TerFLY
went(flesh is grass)
from Troy,
n.y.
the way of(all
flesh is grass)with one "Paul"
a harvard boy
alas!
(who simply wor
shipped her)who
after not coming once in seven years exp10
ded like a toy eloping to Ire(land must be
heav
en
FoR
my
motH)with a grass wid
OW
er who smelt rath
er like her fath
er who smelt rath
er(Er
camef
romth
AIR- XII
* * *
FULL SPEED ASTERN)
m
usil(age)ini
sticks
tuh de mans
l
(hutch)hutchinson says sweet guinea
pigs do it buy uh cupl un
wait
k
(relijinisde)o(peemuvdepipl)
marx okays jippymugun
roomur
j
e(wut)
hova
in big cumbine wid
i
(chek
undublchek)
babbitt
(GOD SAVE THE UNCOMMONWEALTH OF HUMANUSETTS- XVII
* * *
don't cries to please my
mustn't broke)like Is
like that please stroke
for now stroke answers(but
now don't you're hurting o
Me please you're killing)death
is like now That please
squirtnowing for
o squirting we're replies(at
which now O fear turned o Now
handspring trans
forming it
self int
o eighteen)Don't
(for)Please(tnights,on whose for
eheads shone
eternal pleasedon't;
rising:from the Shall.- XXXIV
* * *
An(fragrance)Of
(Begins)
millions
Of Tints(and)
&
(grows)Slowly(slowly)voyaging
tones intimate tumult
(Into)bangs
minds into
dream(An)quickly
Not
un deux trois
der
die
Stood(apparition.)
WITH(THE ROUND AIR IS FILLED)OPENING- XXXIX
* * *
twi-
is -Light bird
ful
-ly dar
kness eats
a distance a
c(h)luck
(l)ing of just bells (touch)ing
?mind
(moon begins The
)
now,est hills er dream;new
.oh if
when:
&
a
nd O impercept i bl- XLI
* * *
if I love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries
if you love
me)distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream
if we love each (shyly)
other,what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing- LIV
* * *
if there a flower(whom
i meet anywhere)
able to be and seem
so quiet softly as your hair
what bird has perfect fear
(of sudden me)like these
first deepest rare
quiet who are your eyes
(shall any dream
comes a more millionth mile
shyly to its doom
than you will smile)- LVIII
May 27, 2024
some of Cummings' most difficult to decipher poetry is in this 1931 collection - and some of his most unabashedly romantic, including one of his most beloved poems:
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
-------
of interest ... the apparent "W" of the title on the original cover, or when the title is reproduced as "W [ViVa]" or "W [Viva]", is not really a W, but two overlapping Vs, which refer to a graffito commonly found on southern European walls, meaning ‘long live,’ as in ‘Viva Napoli’ ... a collection of 70 poems in which every seventh poem is a sonnet and the last 7 poems are all sonnets ...
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
-------
of interest ... the apparent "W" of the title on the original cover, or when the title is reproduced as "W [ViVa]" or "W [Viva]", is not really a W, but two overlapping Vs, which refer to a graffito commonly found on southern European walls, meaning ‘long live,’ as in ‘Viva Napoli’ ... a collection of 70 poems in which every seventh poem is a sonnet and the last 7 poems are all sonnets ...
September 3, 2020
Okay, so this is a book of experimental poetry. It was okay... but it was experimental. Some of the poems you are able to decipher and others leave the reader confused. His works are still descriptive and vibrant... but once again experimental.
February 3, 2022
Modernism takes a depart from the romantics. Language sounds the farewell, but it’s still languages like in a cubist painting. Words paint a fragmented whole with pieces that, even when not belonging to a Poe , belong to the whole collection and the poet’s work.
January 29, 2021
This demands time to read - but is well worth the time.
June 21, 2021
Weird but quite creative.
March 25, 2022
Some poems I really liked, but a lot of them just weren’t for me and I didn’t get much out of.
August 29, 2007
Some of his best writing including many of his love poems. Woody Allen fans will remember the line 'not even the rain has such small hands' from Hannah & Her Sisters. A lot of very experimental poems but each poem is such a cohesive concept that I find new delightful interpretations every time I read (or I understand a bit more of what he meant each time). Whimsical, romantic & alternatingly exuberant, witty, defiant, and melancholy. "For only nobody knows where truth grows why birds fly and especially who the moon is."
April 28, 2012
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
& the whole garden will bow)
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
& the whole garden will bow)
March 19, 2015
Favorites:
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
i'd think "wonder
you in win ter who sit
come a little further- why be afraid-
lady will you come with me into
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
my darling since you and i are thoroughly haunted by
if you and i awakening discover that(somehow
nothing is more exactly terrible than
put off your faces,Death;for day is over
here is the ocean,this is moonlight:say
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
i'd think "wonder
you in win ter who sit
come a little further- why be afraid-
lady will you come with me into
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
my darling since you and i are thoroughly haunted by
if you and i awakening discover that(somehow
nothing is more exactly terrible than
put off your faces,Death;for day is over
here is the ocean,this is moonlight:say
May 1, 2016
I am currently reading all of e. e. Cummings. I actually own this volume and ha e read it many times. It was quite satisfying to read our in its chronological order and in context with his earlier works.
September 2, 2010
As cummings poems become more obscure, I enjoy them less.
September 7, 2011
Difficult to read, but once you hit the mid-point the syntax breaks and words flow freely and with more clarity than ever before. a good primer for cummings.
May 7, 2015
It took me a while to get into the cadence of the writing style, but once there it was a beautiful ride
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews