Tulips & Chimneys

E.E. Cummings

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780486826912
• eBook ISBN: 9780486837079
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Edward Estlin Cummings (1894–1962), a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard University graduate, is best known for his rejection of traditional poetic forms. As e. e. cummings, he conducted radical experiments with spelling, syntax, and punctuation that inspired a revolution in twentieth-century literary expression and excited the admiration and affection of poetry lovers of all ages.
With his 1923 debut, Tulips & Chimneys, the 25-year-old poet rattled the conservative literary scene, directing his avant-garde approach to the traditional subjects of love, life, time, and beauty. His playful treatment of punctuation and language adds enduring zest to such popular and oft-anthologized poems as "All in green went my love riding," "in Just-," "Tumbling-hair," "O sweet spontaneous," "Buffalo Bill's," and "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls." This edition presents complete and textually accurate editions of Cummings's work, in keeping with the original manuscripts and the poet's intentions.

TULIPS

Epithalamion

1.

Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost

with quivering continual thighs invite

the thrilling rain the slender paramour

to toy with thy extraordinary lust,

(the sinuous rain which rising from thy bed

steals to his wife the sky and hour by hour

wholly renews her pale flesh with delight)

—immortally whence are the high gods fled?

Speak elm eloquent pandar with thy nod

significant to the ecstatic earth

in token of his coming whom her soul

burns to embrace—and didst thou know the god

from but the imprint of whose cloven feet

the shrieking dryad sought her leafy goal,

at the mere echo of whose shining mirth

the furious hearts of mountains ceased to beat?

Wind beautifully who wanderest

over smooth pages of forgotten joy

proving the peaceful theorems of the flowers

—didst e’er depart upon more exquisite quest?

and did thy fortunate fingers sometime dwell

(within a greener shadow of secret bowers)

among the curves of that delicious boy

whose serious grace one goddess loved too well?

Chryselephantine Zeus Olympian

sceptred colossus of the Pheidian soul

whose eagle frights creation, in whose palm

Nike presents the crown sweetest to man,

whose lilied robe the sun’s white hands emboss,

betwixt whose absolute feet anoint with calm

of intent stars circling the acerb pole

poises, smiling, the diadumenos

in whose young chiseled eyes the people saw

their once again victorious Pantarkes

(whose grace the prince of artists made him bold

to imitate between the feet of awe),

thunderer whose omnipotent brow showers

its curls of unendured eternal gold

over the infinite breast in bright degrees,

whose pillow is the graces and the hours,

father of gods and men whose subtle throne

twain sphinxes bear each with a writhing youth

caught to her brazen breasts, whose foot-stool tells

how fought the looser of the warlike zone

of her that brought forth tall Hippolytus,

lord on whose pedestal the deep expels

(over Selene’s car closing uncouth)

of Helios the sweet wheels tremulous—

are there no kings in Argos, that the song

is silent, of the steep unspeaking tower

within whose brightening strictness Danae

saw the night severed and the glowing throng

descend, felt on her flesh the amorous strain

of gradual hands and yielding to that fee

her eager body’s unimmortal flower

knew in the darkness a more burning rain?

2.

And still the mad magnificent herald Spring

assembles beauty from forgetfulness

with the wild trump of April:witchery

of sound and odour drives the wingless thing

man forth into bright air, for now the red

leaps in the maple’s cheek, and suddenly

by shining hordes in sweet unserious dress

ascends the golden crocus from the dead.

On dappled dawn f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Contents
• TULIPS
• CHIMNEYS