For me, e. e. cummings was someone you got really into your first or second year of college, but didn’t really think about after that. If I hadn’t gotten into Ezra Pound first, I would say that cummings is a sort of way station en route to Pound.

In short, since the early to mid 90’s, I haven’t given him much thought.

But, I kept seeing this edition in some of my favorite local bookstores (Kramerbooks and Bride Street Books). I assume it is a relatively new published collection (obviously, the poems themselves are not new), because I had never seen it before.

I am a big fan of erotic poetry (the Mary Ann Caws edited Surrealist Love Poem is a favorite of mine), so I picked it up.

To make a long story short, if you are like me, you have spent most of your life thinking of cummings as that modernist poet with a personal grudge against punctuation and capitalization. And, well, you would be right, but you would also be missing so much more.

A silly realization I know – one of the twentieth century’s truly canonical poets and I am surprised to find out he’s any good?

So, instead, let me say, this a wonderful way to reacquaint yourself with a poet you might not have considered in a long while and great gift for a broad-minded loved one.