Cari's Reviews > 100 Selected Poems

My rating of works of poetry are always purely based on my personal enjoyment of them and are never based on the skill of the writing. To me, poetry is all about perception and whether or not the words speak to you. 100 Selected Poems proves that E.E. Cummings was a master manipulator of words. His voice in these poems was so witty and clever and sometimes I would have to take a lengthy pause at the end of a piece before it would click and I'd say "I see what he did there!". While being unique and brilliant, I just didn't see much here that really struck me on a personal level (my whole reason for reading poetry)!

There were a few lines I was particularly fond of though:

"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

"if there are heavens, then my mother will (all by herself) have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lillies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses..."


And here from my favorite, poem #8:
"it may not always be so; and I say
that if your lips, which I have loved, should
touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away...
...if this should be, I say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that I may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me..."