Love: Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings - Hardcover

Starred Review. In this astonishing picture book about sensual love, Myers (Black Cat) combines evocative photographs of people and paintings to create collages that match the startling imagery in cummings's poems. Focusing primarily on the kind of breathless love for which "feeling is first," and a lover can render "death and forever with each breathing," the intense poems are made even more powerful by Myers's brilliant artwork. Each illustration translates the emotions behind cummings's quicksilver metaphors into unforgettable visual imagery. A description of the separation of lovers that "whittles life to eternity/ —after which our separating selves become museums/ filled with skillfully stuffed memories" takes visual form with an arresting image of a person's bare back and shoulders covered with butterflies. Myers unifies the book thematically with repeating images. "Birds who are the secret of living" appear in one poem, escaping a door that covers a young man's heart; and in another, creamy doves circle a nude woman to "cover her briefness in singing/ close her with intricate faint birds." However, despite its formatting as a picture book and its listing as appropriate for "all ages," the book's emphasis upon erotic love makes it more suitable for sophisticated teens and adults than for children—especially the inclusion of a bantering seduction poem—"but it's life said he/ but your wife said she/ .../ (cccome? said he/ ummm said she)." All ages. (Dec.)
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Grade 9 Up–Myers has assembled a collection of 19 love poems that reflects cummings at his playful, inventive best. They include since feeling is first, somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond, and love our so right/is,all. Difficult and challenging in format, they reward careful readers with metaphysical insight. Myers's artful photographic images on painted backgrounds accompany the selections. The poem we love each other very dearly is illustrated with a photo of a woman's face torn in half and arranged along with the text across two pages. Unfortunately, not all of the visual interpretations match cummings's elusive imagery. For the splendid open your heart:/i'll give you a treasure/of tiniest world/a piece of forever with, the artist crafts an innocuous image of a young man with a bit of sky inserted into his open mouth. The fairly adult connotations of may i feel said he/(i'll squeal said she are disconcertingly paired with two fresh-faced teens. Myers's attempt to make these poems accessible to a new generation is admirable, but these lovely and challenging works defy easy definitions.–Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA
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