The Beauty of Living: E.E. Cummings in the Great War (W.W. Norton, July 21, 2020) tells the story of one of our most popular and enduring poets, one whose name extends beyond the boundaries of the literary world. Renowned for his formally fractured, gleefully alive poetry, Cummings is not often thought of as a war poet. But his experience in France and as a prisoner during World War I (the basis for his first work of prose, The Enormous Room) escalated his earlier breaks with conventional form and encouraged the innovation with which his name would soon become synonymous.
Exploring the literary paganism of Cummings’ Harvard circle, this biography builds on Rosenblitt’s earlier book, E.E. Cummings’ Modernism and the Classics: Each Imperishable Stanza (OUP 2016).
E.E. Cummings’ Modernism and the Classics received a CAMWS 2018 First Book Award, and The Beauty of Living has recently been named as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times (August 13, 2020).
For more information on The Beauty of Living from W.W. Norton see here.
