This book, a collection of poems by e. e. cummings, was just gorgeous. I mean, if you like a good poem then (well there's no shortage of them but) dive right in - cummings's work is modernistic and incredibly inventive in places, but his style is so polished and honed that they are immediately accessible too (perhaps on second or third reading for some of the more experimental ones); you will be swollen with feelings from perfectly-constructed abstractions; you will come to learn the truly immaculate power of well-chosen/placed punctuation; some of the simpler ones are like drinking a warm mugful of springtime sunbeams blended with honey and rosepetals and lovers' embraces. There is blazing romance and raw human joy and natural beauty in these poems, and sword-sharp satire in some of them too. As with it seems most of the poetry books I've done posts about, I don't have any particularly strong reflective thoughts about the book overall, as these like all true and great poems are transcendent, and thus resist being directly digestible by mere intellect: they are to be felt, not made into some ingredient for a hodgepodge mishmash whimwham of ideas none of which could possibly grasp the elusive core of meaning upon which a body of poetic work ultimately rests. And so, to that end, I will conclude this post by copying one out.
no man,if men are gods;but if gods must
be men,the sometimes only man is this
(most common,for each anguish is his grief;
and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare)
a fiend,if fiends speak truth;if angels burn
by their own generous completely light,
an angel;or(as various worlds he'll spurn
rather than fail immeasurable fate)
coward,clown,traitor,idiot,dreamer,beast-
such was a poet and shall be and is
-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend
a sunbeam's architecture with his life:
and carve immortal jungles of despair
to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand
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