Bücher von E. E. Cummings

"No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader."-Randall Jarrell

In Great War¿era France, E. E. Cummings is lifted, along with his friend B., from his job as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross, and deposited in a jail in La Ferté Macé as a suspected spy. There his life consists of strolls in the cour, la soupe, and his mattress in The Enormous Room, the male prisoners¿ communal cell. It¿s these prisoners whom Cummings describes in lurid detail.The Enormous Room is far from a straightforward autobiographical diary. Cummings¿ descriptions, peppered liberally with colloquial French, avoid time and, for the most part, place, and instead focus on the personal aspects of his internment, especially in the almost metaphysical description of the most otherworldly of his compatriots: The Delectable Mountains.During his imprisonment, Cummings¿ father petitioned the U.S. and French authorities for his liberty. This, and his eventual return home, are described in the book¿s introduction.

An early autobiographical novel by the great American poet, closely based on his experiences in a French detention facility in World War I. Falsely suspected of spying for Germany, Cummings and a friend were detained in appallingly squalid conditions amid abusive guards and an international collection of people who would be misfits under most circumstances. Considered by F. Scott Fitzgerald to be the finest novel to emerge from the Great War, it remains a vivid tale documenting the stupidity and cruelty endemic to authorities afflicted equally with paranoia and power.fic

The Enormous Room is a fictionalized autobiographical account of the three months that E. E. Cummings spent in a French prison under suspicion of espionage-a circumstance he could have easily avoided had he professed a hatred of Germans. Instead, when questioned, Cummings answered French authorities in a way that insured that he would accompany his friend "B." (William Slater Brown), who was indeed guilty of writing letters critical of the French government. The psychologically tense narrative-shocking and provocative in its day-juxtaposes the barbarity and inhumanity of war against the camaraderie and collective spirit of the oppressed. As a piece of writing, it foreshadows the whimsy, humor, pessimism, and jubilance that would come to characterize Cummings's poetry while, on its own, it stands as a major work of World War I literature. This Warbler Classics edition includes Paul Headrick's essay "Brilliant Obscurity: The Reception of The Enormous Room," as well as a detailed biographical timeline.

A paperback collection newly offset from Complete Poems 1904-1962 with an afterword by the Cummings scholar George James Firmage.

An eye-opening selection of Cumming's more avant-garde poetry and prose.

Reissued in an edition newly offset from the authoritative Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George James Firmage.

A new volume in the Liveright series of Cummings reissues, offset from the authoritative Complete Poems 1904-1962.