E. E. Cummings, Susan Cheever
E. E. Cummings, Susan Cheever
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E. E. Cummings
A Life

Author: Susan Cheever

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 7 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/11/2014


Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Bill and Home before Dark comes a major reassessment of the life and work of one of America's preeminent twentieth-century poets.E. E. Cummings' radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax resulted in his creation of a new, idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. And while there was critical disagreement about his work (Edmund Wilson called it "hideous," while Malcolm Cowley called him "unsurpassed in his field"), at the time of his death in 1962, at age sixty-seven, he was, after Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in the United States. Now, in this new biography, Susan Cheever traces the development of the poet and his work. She takes us from Cummings' seemingly idyllic childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, through his years at Harvard (rooming with Dos Passos, befriending Malcolm Cowley and Lincoln Kirstein) where the radical verse of Ezra Pound lured the young writer away from the politeness of the traditional nature poem and towards a more adventurous, sexually conscious form. We follow Cummings to Paris in 1917 and, finally, to Greenwich Village to be among other modernist poets of the day, including Marianne Moore and Hart Crane.Rich and illuminating, E. E. Cummings: A Life is a revelation of the man and the poet, and a brilliant reassessment of the freighted path of his legacy.

About Susan Cheever

Susan Cheever was born in New York City and graduated from Brown University. A Guggenheim Fellow and a director of the board of the Yaddo Corporation, she currently teaches in the MFA programs at Bennington College and the New School. She lives in New York City.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards, as well as more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Derek on March 25, 2023

A short but solid biography of the versatile modernist.......more

Goodreads review by Mark on October 03, 2013

A fair enough biography, but with some qualms: 1) possibly because Cheever herself is the daughter of a famous writer, she seems a bit more hung up on Cummings's daughter than seems strictly necessary 2) she makes a couple of waves at addressing Cummings's alleged anti-Semitism, but never really grap......more

Goodreads review by Moonkiszt on February 04, 2023

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain. . . . And that beauty is only part of o......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on January 28, 2014

True to it's title, E. E. Cummings: A Life shows the life of America's first modernist in all its banality. Readers gravitate toward biography partly for this precise reason: it reassures us that our lives are not so different than those of our favorite personalities by demonstrating how their lives......more

Goodreads review by James on February 07, 2015

When we begin this biography of E. E. Cummings we're aware that Susan Cheever knew him through her father, John. The opening is fascinating as she tells of the night in 1958 she met him following a poetry reading. She sat in the back seat and studied him while her father drove Cummings from the read......more


Quotes

“Cheever’s reconsideration of Cummings and his work charms, rattles, and enlightens in emulation of Cummings’ radically disarming, tender, sexy, plangent, and furious poems.” Booklist (starred review)

“Even those with no interest in modern poetry may want to listen to the story of Cummings’ life; it has all the elements of drama, and then some. Those who are familiar with the poetry or the two prose books…will find it irresistible. Stefan Rudnicki’s measured narration resists sensationalism and, when the notoriously difficult poems are quoted, manages to convey something of their sense and formal structure. He reflects the intimate tone of this biography…without losing the author’s analytical distance.” AudioFile

“Drawing on letters, archival material, and several more comprehensive biographies, Cheever distills the major events of Cummings’ life along with reflections on the challenge of interpreting her subject’s self-destructive behavior, anti-Semitism, sexuality, and egotism…This sympathetic life may win Cummings a new generation of readers.” Kirkus Reviews