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The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
I : Six Nonlectures
The author begins his "nonlectures" with the warning "I haven't the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer." Then, at intervals, he proceeds to deliver the following:
1. i & my parents
2. i & their son
3. i & selfdiscovery
4. i & you & is
5. i & now & him
6. i & am & santa claus
These talks contain selections from the poetry of Wordsworth, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, and others, including e.e. cummings. Together, it forms a good introduction to the work of e.e. cummings.
1. i & my parents
2. i & their son
3. i & selfdiscovery
4. i & you & is
5. i & now & him
6. i & am & santa claus
These talks contain selections from the poetry of Wordsworth, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, and others, including e.e. cummings. Together, it forms a good introduction to the work of e.e. cummings.
118 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
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607 people want to read
About the author
E.E. Cummings
296Ìýbooks3,919ÌýfollowersEdward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.� Serving as Cummings� debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments� foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.�
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source:
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s.� Serving as Cummings� debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments� foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.�
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
source:
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 10, 2016
found this on cassette tape for ten cents at the college book sale. finally gave it a whirl. completely fucked up and weird. i guess the tape has been out of print for decades, but i like to play the nonlectures at full-volume at night on my old sound system beside the open window and watched the people go by.
April 23, 2017
After reading maybe a third of cummings' poems, I picked this up, fascinated by his take on the college lecture. Many great points, sprinkled throughout, and I memorized one sonnet he featured, "When serpents bargain for the right to squirm/ And the sun strikes to earn a living wage�," essentially an anti-union sonnet, though I was a lifetime enthusiastic member of the AFT. I quoted this alternate view, that of privilege, whenever I discussed unions, incuding once in chains of protest before my own college.
May 20, 2010
pg 10:
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself))have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven or
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
and the whole garden will bow)
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself))have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven or
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
and the whole garden will bow)
June 3, 2023
Like watching an abstract painter paint realism just in case you misunderstood their choice or mistook them for anything other than genius.
This reading will not be my last nor closest.
This reading will not be my last nor closest.
August 7, 2014
2007 wrote: A great series of lectures by cummings. Here he opens up to his childhood, his interests in great poetry, his political and socio viewpoints and mainly his love of his work. Although he very rarely talks about creating poetry, he would state that his life was his catalyst so to understand poetry, one must understand life. After each lecture he shares some of his favorite poetry- which ranges, but my favorite were classic Dante and Shakespeare. Each lecture is titled I"i" followed by an "&" (ie "i & self discovery" and "i & you &is"). Each is like having a conversation with a well-versed friend. It isn't a cut and dry autobiography- 'this happened, then that happened' Here he tells of how events shaped him. As a fairly elusive writer to truely grasp, this work is a thirst quencher. A short part on Somerville and Cambridge was very interesting as i live here now, but also in an idea I toil with about chnaging demographics changing culture and making America homogenous, rather than town's having distinct character.
May 6, 2015
I wanted to like this book more than I did and there were definitely some five star moments (especially Cummings' discussions of his childhood and some of the poems by others he included), but it honestly just felt so dated and frustratingly uncritical in terms of politics and poetics that the promise of those moments just made the overall experience more disappointing.
March 28, 2016
For some inexplicable reason, I am drawn to E.E. Cummings. I don't understand what he's saying most of the time, and when I do - it's in glimpses only. And yet there is something I want to hear in there, something I keep looking for. He would like that. One of his main points about life seems (to me) to be mystery, after all. Life is not scientific, life is not knowledge, life is love and mystery and simply Being. So maybe in his eyes I'm on the right track, being lost in it.
This was a bewildering read. At times gorgeous and breathtaking, and more times than not, frustrating and puzzling. I like when people speak clearly. Cummings does not. That's his way - elaborate tricks of grammar and inverted word order and parentheses and no punctuation guide posts whatever - voila! He laughs at clarity. Clarity is not like life or life-like.
A sample of one of his more straight-forward passages:
"You haven't the least or feeblest conception of being here, and now, and alone, and yourself. Why (you ask) should anyone want to be here, when (simply by pressing a button) anyone can be in fifty places at once? How could anyone want to be now, when anyone can go whening all over creation at the twist of a knob? What could induce anyone to desire aloneness, when billions of soi-disant dollars are mercifully squandered by a good and great government lest anyone anywhere should ever for a single instant be alone?As for being yourself - why on earth should you be yourself; when instead of being yourself you can be a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand thousand, other people? The very thought of being oneself in a epoch of interchangeable selves must appear supremely ridiculous."
So I enjoyed these "Nonlectures", quite a bit, especially when I didn't want to shake the heck out of Edward Estlin, and even then. Oh, and I had to look up "soi-disant", and you'd better too, if you want to read this. He uses it a lot.
This was a bewildering read. At times gorgeous and breathtaking, and more times than not, frustrating and puzzling. I like when people speak clearly. Cummings does not. That's his way - elaborate tricks of grammar and inverted word order and parentheses and no punctuation guide posts whatever - voila! He laughs at clarity. Clarity is not like life or life-like.
A sample of one of his more straight-forward passages:
"You haven't the least or feeblest conception of being here, and now, and alone, and yourself. Why (you ask) should anyone want to be here, when (simply by pressing a button) anyone can be in fifty places at once? How could anyone want to be now, when anyone can go whening all over creation at the twist of a knob? What could induce anyone to desire aloneness, when billions of soi-disant dollars are mercifully squandered by a good and great government lest anyone anywhere should ever for a single instant be alone?As for being yourself - why on earth should you be yourself; when instead of being yourself you can be a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand thousand, other people? The very thought of being oneself in a epoch of interchangeable selves must appear supremely ridiculous."
So I enjoyed these "Nonlectures", quite a bit, especially when I didn't want to shake the heck out of Edward Estlin, and even then. Oh, and I had to look up "soi-disant", and you'd better too, if you want to read this. He uses it a lot.
January 20, 2018
There's a dated-ness to some of the later lectures, something that perhaps doesn't translate to the post Cold War world, but the first several of these "lectures" are delightful discussions of autobiograpy and aesthetic statement, and his love for the poetry of others and his closing of each lecture with a diverse range of his favorite poems is a powerful reminder of the importance of poetry to intellectual life.
August 5, 2018
Returning to E. E. Cummings� i: six nonlectures after more than half a century, the young man I was when I first encountered this book fell in love all over again at the age of 76.
What an experience it must have been to be in the audience on the six occasions in 1952 and 1953 when Cummings delivered these “nonlectures� at Harvard University. Imagine being there on that first occasion when Cummings began with this: “Let me cordially warn you, at the opening of these so-called lectures, that I haven’t the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer. Lecturing is presumably a form of teaching; and presumably a teacher is somebody who knows. I never did, and still don’t, know. What has always fascinated me is not teaching, but learning; and I assure you that if the acceptance of a Charles Eliot Norton professorship hadn’t rapidly entangled itself with the expectation of learning a very great deal, I should now be somewhere else. Let me also assure you that I feel extremely glad to be here; and that I heartily hope you won’t feel extremely sorry.�
He then proceeds, in all six lectures, to make the most passionate argument for individuality and against conformity that you ever likely to come across.
I was particularly taken with the second nonlecture, a celebration of the poet’s childhood and parentage: “My own home faced the Cambridge world as a finely and solidly constructed mansion, preceded by a large oval lawn and ringed with an imposing white-pine hedge. Just in front of the house itself stood two huge apple trees; and faithfully, every spring, these giants lifted their worlds of fragrance toward the room where I breathed and dreamed.� (A photograph in Charles Norman’s 1972 biography, E. E . Cummings: The Magic-Maker.,confirms that “mansion� is no exaggeration. Cummings was a child of privilege.)
For all his quirkiness, nose-thumbing and mold-breaking, Cummings seems to this reader always firmly part of a long tradition, taking his place in it in the only way he comfortably can. Each non-lecture closes with the recitation of poetry from the canon, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth and even the New Testament. Others get quoted within the lectures � Rilke reverently � and Cummings freely quotes himself.
In today’s reductive, epithet-laden American vocabulary, Cummings is likely to be called arrogant and/or elitist. I suppose that much of the time he resoundingly and unapologetically is, and I’m glad. This is not a book for “mostpeople,� but “you and i� can find pleasure, vindication and inspiration in it � “illimitable,� to use Cummings� favored word.
What an experience it must have been to be in the audience on the six occasions in 1952 and 1953 when Cummings delivered these “nonlectures� at Harvard University. Imagine being there on that first occasion when Cummings began with this: “Let me cordially warn you, at the opening of these so-called lectures, that I haven’t the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer. Lecturing is presumably a form of teaching; and presumably a teacher is somebody who knows. I never did, and still don’t, know. What has always fascinated me is not teaching, but learning; and I assure you that if the acceptance of a Charles Eliot Norton professorship hadn’t rapidly entangled itself with the expectation of learning a very great deal, I should now be somewhere else. Let me also assure you that I feel extremely glad to be here; and that I heartily hope you won’t feel extremely sorry.�
He then proceeds, in all six lectures, to make the most passionate argument for individuality and against conformity that you ever likely to come across.
I was particularly taken with the second nonlecture, a celebration of the poet’s childhood and parentage: “My own home faced the Cambridge world as a finely and solidly constructed mansion, preceded by a large oval lawn and ringed with an imposing white-pine hedge. Just in front of the house itself stood two huge apple trees; and faithfully, every spring, these giants lifted their worlds of fragrance toward the room where I breathed and dreamed.� (A photograph in Charles Norman’s 1972 biography, E. E . Cummings: The Magic-Maker.,confirms that “mansion� is no exaggeration. Cummings was a child of privilege.)
For all his quirkiness, nose-thumbing and mold-breaking, Cummings seems to this reader always firmly part of a long tradition, taking his place in it in the only way he comfortably can. Each non-lecture closes with the recitation of poetry from the canon, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth and even the New Testament. Others get quoted within the lectures � Rilke reverently � and Cummings freely quotes himself.
In today’s reductive, epithet-laden American vocabulary, Cummings is likely to be called arrogant and/or elitist. I suppose that much of the time he resoundingly and unapologetically is, and I’m glad. This is not a book for “mostpeople,� but “you and i� can find pleasure, vindication and inspiration in it � “illimitable,� to use Cummings� favored word.
May 26, 2012
This review will be painfully incoherent, as I cannot speak critically about anything that was left behind by ee cummings. I just adored this series of self-portraits, written in a light way, without any burden of egocentric dirt. Whatever was happening in his mind, whatever colours filled it, I liked. If only I could get a physical copy of said (non)lectures, man, I'd be the happiest little imp on Earth.
February 6, 2022
But if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about self styled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it-and be. If you can't, cheer up and go about other people's business; and do (or undo) till you drop.
p. 24
---
Now our ignoramus faces the nonanswerable question "who, as a writer, am I?" with which his nonlecturing career began; and finds himself deluged by multitudinous answers. What would these multitudinous answers say if they could speak as a single answer? Possibly or impossibly this -
I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters "a very good God damn": that Han artist, a man, a failure" is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any un-understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automation, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.
pp. 110-111
p. 24
---
Now our ignoramus faces the nonanswerable question "who, as a writer, am I?" with which his nonlecturing career began; and finds himself deluged by multitudinous answers. What would these multitudinous answers say if they could speak as a single answer? Possibly or impossibly this -
I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters "a very good God damn": that Han artist, a man, a failure" is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any un-understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automation, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.
pp. 110-111
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August 29, 2020"Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide; and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself whoever himself may be is immortal; and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality."
March 16, 2017
Hmmm, an odd book - very of the time it was written. Some illuminating scraps regarding cummings background and aesthetic development, but a lot of overly self-conscious cutesy weirdness, also.
February 2, 2019
It starts very strong, but it fails to deliver on its potential.
April 2, 2020
Just gorgeous. For any fan of this poet, this is a gem.
January 17, 2022
Exceptional exploration of self and self transcendence and poetry and the merit of a poem standing on its own.
December 19, 2024
wowee! i wanted to love it but unfortunately it was too 1950s cambridge, massachusetts for me
January 29, 2017
e. e. cummings is so refreshing to me in my life right now. That being said, he was my favorite part of these nonlectures. I loved the included bits of other authors/poets - they broke up each section very well - but I couldn't get enough of cummings writing style in this.
At times I'd read without being 100% focused, so it was easy to get a little lost for me, making this something I hope to re read a couple times throughout my life.
This became a fav of mine because it was beautiful and thought-provoking, and I ended it knowing I'd want to pick it up again for pleasure, and to gain something new the second time around.
personal note: I started this in nov16, accidentally left it at my school during break, came back to school in late jan17, was in the middle of reading another book, put that down to finish this....and that's the story of why it took me 3 months to read 100 pages lol.
At times I'd read without being 100% focused, so it was easy to get a little lost for me, making this something I hope to re read a couple times throughout my life.
This became a fav of mine because it was beautiful and thought-provoking, and I ended it knowing I'd want to pick it up again for pleasure, and to gain something new the second time around.
personal note: I started this in nov16, accidentally left it at my school during break, came back to school in late jan17, was in the middle of reading another book, put that down to finish this....and that's the story of why it took me 3 months to read 100 pages lol.
May 19, 2015
"It seems that ever since Harvard he'd been making (despite all sorts of panics and panaceas) big money as an advertising writer; and this remarkable feat unutterably depressed him."
E.E. Cummings may just be my favorite poet, but leafing through his book of non-lectures - small glimpses into the personal moments he wished to share about his life of letters - I've come to find that he is also one of my favorite writers. "I: Six Nonlectures" is a book that I treasure alongside Stephen King's "On Writing" and Hafiz's "The Gift."
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in literature in general, be it poetry, prose, science fiction, romance, history, etc. It rings true, it reads weird, and it satisfies in its own way. Everything you'd expect from a Cummings work.
E.E. Cummings may just be my favorite poet, but leafing through his book of non-lectures - small glimpses into the personal moments he wished to share about his life of letters - I've come to find that he is also one of my favorite writers. "I: Six Nonlectures" is a book that I treasure alongside Stephen King's "On Writing" and Hafiz's "The Gift."
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in literature in general, be it poetry, prose, science fiction, romance, history, etc. It rings true, it reads weird, and it satisfies in its own way. Everything you'd expect from a Cummings work.
January 9, 2008
a series of nonlectures he gave to havard students in the sanders theatre 1952-1953. includes some of his favorite poems, and extracts here and there from his own work. best reason to read: for the insight into his harvard square boyhood on irving street: "The more implacably a virtuous Cambridge drew me toward what might have been her bosom, the more sure I felt that soi-disant respectability comprised nearly everything which I couldn't respect, and the more eagerly I explored sinful Somerville. But while sinful Somerville certainly possessed a bosom (in fact, bosoms) she also possessed fists which hit below the belt and arms which threw snowballs containing small rocks."
October 10, 2007
i read the first 3 of these lectures while waiting for a friend to be dismissed from a freshman college english class. it seemed like the right thing to do: plop down in the middle of that hallway and try to work my way through the web that cummings so happily spins.
i didn't understand anything i read, but it sure was fun.
going back to the book several years later it proved to be a bit more understandable, i was proud to have deciphered some of it -- and look forward to trying again in another few years.
he dances with his words. he kisses each letter.
i didn't understand anything i read, but it sure was fun.
going back to the book several years later it proved to be a bit more understandable, i was proud to have deciphered some of it -- and look forward to trying again in another few years.
he dances with his words. he kisses each letter.
April 19, 2010
Well. It gives you background on cummings, which is nice. But his prose writing is pretty obnoxious to read. It's a lot of 3rd person gibberish like, "This non-human person speaking for himself (and only), finds himself (or his non-self), to be utterly dissatisfied with his own non-poetry poetry." There's a lot of dreadful stuff here. And the play in non-lecture six could not be stupider. I actually laughed out loud reading it.
But still, it's cummings. He tries to be charming. He's excited. He picks good poems to read from the ancient canon.
But still, it's cummings. He tries to be charming. He's excited. He picks good poems to read from the ancient canon.
March 10, 2013
Copied down pages out of this. It would be five stars, except for an annoying habit-- slapping "un-" and "non-" on every thing disliked, rather than using a good specific word. And rather than beginning, he goes on pompously about how he is not lecturing--this a lot more false & pompous than lecturing. Other cases like this, where speaking against or denying something he is more egoistical and pompous than that thing.
All of which make cummings what he is & I do love him. My notebook is full of him. I need to buy this.
All of which make cummings what he is & I do love him. My notebook is full of him. I need to buy this.
March 23, 2008
Very enjoyable and playful. I love these lines from the book:
"...beware of heartless them / (given scalpel, they dissect a kiss;/or,sold the reason, they undream a dream)"
"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."
"poetry is being not doing"
"In New York I also breathed; as if for the first time."
"...beware of heartless them / (given scalpel, they dissect a kiss;/or,sold the reason, they undream a dream)"
"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."
"poetry is being not doing"
"In New York I also breathed; as if for the first time."
September 7, 2012
I have quite a few (10?) cummings' poems in my working memory, and I adore them. I was disappointed that these lectures didn't seem to offer anything new or extra. Hm - I even felt impatient with some of the deliberate obfuscation that I couldn't see through quickly. His history of his parents and his own childhood was interesting, and I enjoyed seeing which poems from "the canon" were his ideals - he concluded each of the six lectures with a few of them.
November 9, 2018
"If only he would let his readers read him," was the criticism from an early review of one of Cummings's books. This is more of the same. It's good commentary on his poems, and it's interesting to see him point out the things that he thought were important about his poetic career, and the first few lectures are pretty touching autobiography. It would have been fun to see him perform these, but as reading it's not especially dazzling.
April 29, 2009
Great insight on Cummings and how he thought about his life and work. For the longest time, I hated reading his work. It didn't make any sense to me. I found a poem of his one day on the internet and it spoke volumes to me. He has since then become my favorite poet hands down.
...there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile.
...there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile.
June 25, 2014
This was a sweet and interesting collection of personal-essay like "non-lectures." Some of the stories were really compelling and funny, and other moments, particularly when cummings gets into his dramatic pursuits, were kind of opaque for me. All in all a cool look into the life and mind of a wonderful writer - but I will probably stick to his poems from now on.
April 25, 2007
On one hand, this is a classic paean to the kind of American Individualism that makes me feel really sad. On the other hand, it blows my mind in good way every time I read. Also, wonderfully, Cummings shares some of his favorite OPP (other people's poetry).
May 20, 2009
basically six different "nonlectures" that he gave to a college. sort of an autobiography, sort of some selected favorite works by and in the opinion of cummings, sort of philosophical. he kind of talks like he writes, so it can be difficult to follow. but really interesting.
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