The Enormous Room
About this ebook
Illustrated with drawings Cummings made while imprisoned in France and featuring an illuminating new introduction by Susan Cheever, this reissued edition offers a unique and multifaceted lens onto the inner life of the poet in his youth and demands recognition by a twenty-first-century readership.
About the author
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) was among the most influential, widely read, and revered modernist poets. He was also a playwright, a painter, and a writer of prose. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard University and, during World War I, served with an ambulance corps in France. He spent three months in a French detention camp and subsequently wrote The Enormous Room, a highly acclaimed criticism of World War I. After the war, Cummings returned to the States and published his first collection of poetry, Tulips & Chimneys, which was characterized by his innovative style: pushing the boundaries of language and form while discussing love, nature, and war with sensuousness and glee. He spent the rest of his life painting, writing poetry, and enjoying widespread popularity and success.
Susan Cheever, a novelist and memoirist and the author of E. E. Cummings: A Life, lives in New York.
George J. Firmage edited many works by Cummings, including Erotic Poems; Complete Poems, 1904– 1962; and Fairy Tales.
