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E. E. Cummings
- A Life
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 20th-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 67, 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 toward 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.
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- By: Hilary Spurling
- Narrated by: Hilary Spurling
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of the much honored two-volume biography of Henri Matisse unearths the life and work of the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl Buck, whose novels in the 1930's and 40's were the first written for a Western audience to describe ordinary life in the still secret China of the late 19th and early 20th century.
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Very good
- By M. Brandman on 06-15-10
By: Hilary Spurling
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
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Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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The House of Government
- A Saga of the Russian Revolution
- By: Yuri Slezkine, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 45 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.
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Inside saga of the leaders of Bolshevism & the USSR
- By Edward V. Blanchard on 11-05-17
By: Yuri Slezkine, and others
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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The Ambulance Drivers
- Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: Dean Temple
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense 20-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war. Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps.
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Morris always delivers interesting biographies...
- By NMwritergal on 04-08-17
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Eleanor and Hick
- The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady
- By: Susan Quinn
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1932 Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the first lady with dread. By that time she had put her deep disappointment in her marriage behind her and developed an independent life - now threatened by the public role she would be forced to play. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next 30 years, until Eleanor's death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship.
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An Icon who was real.
- By Francine Fields on 08-17-17
By: Susan Quinn
What listeners say about E. E. Cummings
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kathi
- 02-14-14
Very engaging story of the life of e.e.cummings!
In my first college English class, we read a startling poem written by a man I had never heard of. It began, "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds...:" Along with many who had encountered the work of e.e.cummings, I felt an astonishment at the boldness, the invitation to stretch the mind to view the world differently, to enjoy the play of words and form in the modernist style that was forming itself at the time he began his career. I have continued to read his work ever since--and even though some of it has been controversial and not always pleasing, he has remained a great poet to me.
Thus I was thrilled at finding this book, written by Susan Cheever and narrated by Stefan Rudnicki on Audible. I sat up late into the night listening to it with great pleasure. Cheever and her father apparently knew Edward Estlin Cummings, so she had some first hand experience of who he was.
Cheever says early in the book that e.e. cummings' great skill was, "seeing the world through language." Indeed, he played with form, punctuation, words in ways that invited the reader always to move beyond the bounds of the conventional and view life in very different ways.
I had not known much about Cummings' life before--and it was very interesting to hear how he grew up near Harvard, went to school there--providing the background for his intellectual development--and went on even to become a lecturer there, giving, not surprisingly, what he referred to as his "non-lectures." Even there he found it impossible to be conventional.
Cummings struggled with life--with his rebellious nature--partly against his father, perhaps against the traditional way of viewing society. He hung out with the likes of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Dos Possos--so they clearly all influenced each other in the development of the movement.
He probably struggled with his own self-esteem as well--being a man of slight build, who (despite being in WWI) was not as rugged as his father. Something that possibly put him into psychoanalysis at a time in the early 20th century when that was just becoming available. He was married twice, had a daughter whom he rarely got to see after the divorce from her mother, and finally happily spent the rest of his life with a woman he probably was not married to--Marion Morehouse. However, after the Great Depression, Cummings never again found it as easy to get his own work published or acknowledged as rapidly as it was earlier in the century.
Some of his later work was very controversial--Cheever does a credible job of laying the background of early influences in his life that possibly led to that. But this does not take away (for me, at least) the importance of his contributions to the entire awakening of our society by people who dared to create in new and unusual ways--to invite us all to see beyond the little boxes of our accepted reality. Susan Cheever has written a compact book that is filled with stories of the life and struggles of a man who had to express his world view through poems, essays, plays, paintings, in a way that broke through all conventions.
Highly recommend!
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24 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-25-22
Hello Again Mr. Cummings
Insightful, provocative, revealing and entertaining. I didn’t want it to end either the book or the narrator. If you ever liked the poetry of e e Cummings, this is a side of
his that you want to know - despite its struggle and success. Bravo!
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- Daniel Wilcox
- 09-07-22
Insightful, fast-paced, with astute observations
A well-done biography that reveals new details about Cummings, his tragic morally wrong choices, lack of responsibility, but creative unique genius. Especially intriguing is how this playful, sometimes very angry rebel could become a very conservative Republican because of his life-changing trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, near the same time as Langston Hughes' where the latter praised the communist government.
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- Larry Crabtree
- 08-08-21
Learning more
e.e. cummings was a poet in my school books knew nothing about him. This opened up his world to me. The narration was impressive loved his voice and diction.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Boston Boy
- 01-10-22
Beautiful Biography
I purchased this audiobook on impulse, and I must say that it is beautifully written and narrated. Thank you Susan Cheever
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-13-21
Short and engrossing biography
I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. The reader was really excellent and I particularly enjoyed his readings of ee cummings poetry.
One of the high points of the book was how much poetry by Cummings you got to hear.
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- Show2n
- 12-12-22
Interesting Subject, but the Narrator made it difficult to enjoy
I was very interested in learning about e.e. Cummings, so I gave it a listen.
Pros
Subject biographical info (his childhood, various love affairs, marriages, political evolution)
Cons
The narrator’s voice - nice bass tone, but pretty much one inflection- monotone.
Surface details on his more controversial poems and the backlash they received from readers. Would have liked more details on how that impacted his career.
Glad it was included in my membership because I probably would returned it due to the narrator’s voice - Droning and uninteresting.
Having said that, I did learn a little about the various personal relationships he had,
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