Etcetera The Unpublished Poems of E. E. Cummings

by Cummings, E. E.; Firmage, George James; Kennedy, Richard S.

• ISBN13: 9780871401762
• ISBN10: 0871401762
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-02-17
• Publisher: Liveright

Summary

The poems in Etcetera were discovered in three Cummings manuscript collections and selected from more than 350 unpublished pieces. Many of the poems are from his early years and all convey his freshness and youthful spirit, exhibiting his celebration of love and delight in common natural phenomena. Etcetera was first published by Liveright in 1983. This newly reissued edition is published in a uniform format with Is 5, Tulips & Chimneys, ViVa, XAIPE, and No Thanks.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
Richard S. Kennedy
Note on the Text	3	(4)
George James Firmage
The Harvard Years, 1911-1916
Early
Semi-Spring	7	(1)
The Paper Palace	8	(1)
Night shall eat these girls and boys	9	(1)
Literary Tributes
Chaucer	10	(1)
Great Dante stands in Florence, looking down	11	(1)
Fame Speaks	12	(1)
Helen	13	(1)
Love Poems
I have looked upon thee---and I have loved thee	14	(1)
Reverie	15	(1)
Thy face is a still white house of holy things	16	(1)
What is thy mouth to me?	17	(1)
Dedication	18	(1)
I love you	19	(1)
After your poppied hair inaugurates	20	(1)
Moon-in-the-Trees	21	(1)
When thou art dead, dead, and far from the splendid sin	22	(1)
You are tired	23	(1)
Let us lie here in the disturbing grass	24	(1)
Friends
T.A.M	25	(1)
S.F.D	26	(1)
Softly from its still lair in Plympton Street	27	(1)
S.T	28	(1)
Late
They have hung the sky with arrows	29	(1)
A painted wind has sprung	30	(1)
You shall sing my songs, O earth	31	(1)
In Healey's Palace I was sitting---	32	(3)
Experiments with Typography, Spacing, and Sound, 1916-1917
The awful darkness of the town	35	(1)
A Girl's Ring	36	(1)
logeorge lo wellifitisn't eddy how's the boy	37	(1)
wee people dwelling	38	(1)
the sky	39	(1)
beyond the stolid iron pond	40	(1)
mr. smith	41	(1)
don't get me wrong oblivion	42	(2)
wanta	44	(1)
maker of many mouths	45	(4)
Reflections of the War, Paris, Imprisonment, New York, Peace, 1918
along the justexisting road to Roupy	49	(1)
through the tasteless minute efficient room	50	(1)
my deathly body's deadly lady	51	(1)
first she like a piece of ill-oiled	52	(1)
The moon falls thru the autumn Behind prisons she grins	53	(1)
The moon-lit snow is falling like strange candy into the big eyes of the	54	(1)
Perhaps it was Myself sits down in this chair. There were two chairs, in fact	55	(1)
Noise	56	(2)
a Woman of bronze	58	(1)
hips IOOsest OOping shoulders blonde& pastoral hair, strong	59	(1)
this cigarette is extremely long	60	(1)
love was---entire excellently steep	61	(4)
Poems Left with Elaine Orr, 1918-1919
let us suspect, cherie, this not very big	65	(1)
sometime, perhaps in Paris we will	66	(1)
cherie the very, picturesque, last Day	67	(1)
my little heart is so wonderfully sorry	68	(1)
the spring has been exquisite and the	69	(1)
willing pitifully to bewitch	70	(1)
as	71	(1)
my lady is an ivory garden	72	(2)
if you like my poems let them	74	(3)
Poems from the Dial Papers, 1919-1920
the comedian stands on a corner, the sky is	77	(1)
like most godhouses this particular house	78	(1)
This is the vase, Here	79	(1)
my humorous ghost precisely will	80	(2)
dawn	82	(1)
Above a between-the-acts prattling of	83	(1)
when time delicately is sponging sum after	84	(1)
sometimes i am alive because with	85	(1)
o my wholly unwise and definite	86	(1)
my youthful lady will have other lovers	87	(1)
lady you have written me a letter	88	(1)
but turning a corner, i	89	(1)
you said Is	90	(1)
is	91	(1)
as one who(having written	92	(2)
in front of your house i	94	(1)
Lady, i will touch you with my mind	95	(4)
Poems from the 1920s
I
the newly	99	(1)
now two old ladies sit peacefully knitting	100	(1)
``out of the pants which cover me	101	(1)
pound pound pound	102	(1)
2 shes	103	(2)
II
When parsing warmths of dusk construe	105	(1)
Lady, since your footstep	106	(1)
being(just a little)	107	(1)
Lady	108	(1)
III
The Rain is a Handsome Animal	109	(1)
After Seeing French Funeral	110	(1)
taxis toot whirl people moving perhaps laugh into the slowly	111	(1)
long ago, between a dream and a dream	112	(1)
them which despair	113	(1)
Paris, thou art not	114	(1)
Perfectly a year, we watched together les enfants jumping and	115	(2)
look	117	(1)
when of your eyes one smile entirely brings down	118	(1)
this fear is no longer dear. You are not going to America and	119	(1)
IV
the other guineahen	120	(1)
love's absence is illusion, alias time	121	(1)
Float	122	(1)
birds meet above the new Moon	123	(1)
tonight the moon is round golden entire. It	124	(3)
Late Poems, 1930-1962
I
this (a up green hugestness who and climbs)	127	(1)
cont)-	128	(1)
mary green	129	(1)
lively and loathesome moe's respectably dead	130	(1)
``think of it:not so long ago''	131	(2)
out of bigg	133	(1)
II
the phonograph may(if it likes)be prophe	134	(1)
in hammamet did camping queers et al)	135	(1)
bud(spiggy nuvduh fienus	136	(1)
April`` this letter's dated ''23	137	(1)
come from his gal's	138	(1)
``she had that softness which is falsity''	139	(1)
says ol man no body---	140	(1)
I'm very fond of	141	(2)
devil crept in eden wood	143	(1)
III
love's the i guess most only verb that lives	144	(1)
love is a guess	145	(1)
we being not each other:without love	146	(1)
skies may be blue;yes	147	(1)
she, straddling my lap	148	(1)
n w	149	(1)
b	150	(1)
when (day's amazing murder with) perhaps	151	(1)
there are so many tictoc	152	(1)
time, be kind;herself and i	153	(1)
Us if therefore must forget ourselves)	154	(1)
now winging selves sing sweetly, while ghosts(there	155	(1)
every one of the red roses opened	156	(1)
IV
ringed	157	(2)
G ra D ua	159	(1)
ance)danc	160	(1)
Cri C	161	(2)
leastlessly	163	(1)
s(	164	(1)
rainsweet	165	(1)
life shuts &(opens the world	166	(1)
like a little bear twilight	167	(1)
V
Ballade	168	(1)
for him alone life's worse than worst	169	(1)
all stars are(and not one star only)love	170	(1)
should far this from mankind's unmysteries	171	(1)
thing no is(of	172	(1)
should this fool die	173	(99)
Appendices
A From the Poet's First Collection, 1904-1905
Dedicated to Dear Nana Clarke	177	(1)
As rooms are separated by a curtain	177	(1)
Our Flag	178	(1)
God	179	(1)
The River of Mist	180	(1)
B From the Cambridge Latin School Years, 1908-1911
The world is very big, and we	181	(1)
A chilly, murky night;	182	(1)
The Passing of the Year	183	(1)
Early Summer Sketch	184	(2)
Summer Song	186	(1)
If	187	(1)
The Eagle	188	(2)
The Boy and The Man	190	(1)
God, Thine the hand that doth extend	191	(1)
My Prayer	192	(1)
On souls robbed of their birth-right's better part	193	(1)
Death's Chimneys	194	(1)
After-Glow	195	(2)
C Translations from Horace, 1913
Farewell, runaway snows! For the meadow is green, and the tree stands	197	(1)
The fetters of winter are shattered, shattered	198	(1)
Ah, Postumus, fleet-footed are the years!	199	(2)
Who chides the tears that weep so dear a head?	201	(1)
O, blessed of the gods	202	(5)
Uncollected Poems
Note on the Text	207	(65)
George James Firmage
To William F. Bradbury	209	(1)
The coming of May	210	(1)
Ballad of the Scholar's Lament	211	(1)
Skating	212	(1)
Metamorphosis	213	(1)
Vision	214	(1)
Mist	215	(1)
Water-Lilies	216	(1)
Music	217	(1)
Summer Silence	218	(1)
Sunset	219	(1)
Ballade	220	(2)
Sonnet (A rain-drop on the eyelids of the earth,)	222	(1)
Sonnet (Long since, the flicker brushed with shameless wing)	223	(1)
Do you remember when the fluttering dusk	224	(1)
Nocturne	225	(2)
Sonnet (For that I have forgot the world these days,)	227	(1)
Night	228	(1)
Sonnet (No sunset, but a grey, great, struggling sky)	229	(1)
Longing	230	(2)
Ballad of Love	232	(2)
Ballade of Soul	234	(2)
Sapphics	236	(1)
Sonnet (I dreamed I was among the conquerors,)	237	(1)
Hokku	238	(1)
Belgium	239	(1)
W.H.W., Jr	240	(1)
Finis	241	(1)
because	242	(1)
if(you are i why certainly	243	(1)
The Red Front, translation of Front Rouge	244	(22)
Louis Aragon
Ballad of an Intellectual	266	(3)
american critic ad 1935	269	(1)
guilt is the cause of more disauders	270	(1)
Marianne Moore	271	(1)
Doveglion	272