One of the most important and popular American poets of the twentieth century, E. E. Cummings is best known for his brilliant and innovative verse and its distinctive lack of uppercase letters and conventional grammar. He was also a Cubist painter and a World War I veteran. At the age of twenty-three, he abandoned his artistic pursuits for voluntary service as an ambulance driver in France. His military career culminated in a comedy of errors leading to his arrest and imprisonment for treason, as he memorably recounts in The Enormous Room.
Cummings transforms a tale of unjust incarceration into a high-energy romp and a celebration of the indomitable human spirit that ranks with the best of its contemporaries, including the works of Hemingway and Dos Passos.
Edward Estlin Cummings (1894–1962), known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e e cummings (in the style of some of his poems), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as an eminent voice of twentieth century poetry.
Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll’s House, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen’s birthday honors for services to drama.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.