Nigel Mace,
For Cummings, I suppose it would be is 5 -- it contains a delightful example of the variety in his work: fantastic anti-war poems (“"next to of course god and america i"); love poems (“in spite of everything”, “you being in love”); prostitute poems; Spring poems; sex poems (“she being Brand”, “(ponder, darling, these busted statues”); sonnets; – and, “since feeling is first”. It is light, however, on the visual/typographical/puzzle poems. It’s a wonderful volume – but, in truth, I’d still prolly direct people who wanted to get a good feel for Cummings, or own just one book, to the Kennedy Selected.
BTW -- if we’re talking great and influential, somebody should mention the Thomas H. Johnson Collected Emily Dickinson published in 1955. THAT was a landmark.
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