"Cummings transforms a tale of unjust incarceration [he was a volunteer
ambulance driver] into a high-energy romp and a celebration of the indomitablehuman spirit ".

I certainly didn't get "high-energy romp" out of it, but maybe that's from the "significant amount of material deleted from the book's initial publication in 1922" which is supposedly restored in this edition.
Like others have, however, you do find a kind of genuine joy in it, as well as some strongly ironic passages where he describes unpleasant things in a flippant way, unlike the serious treatment of similar subjects by other writers.

Again, others have found a contemporary relevance in his "detention" (not imprisonment) at the Depot de Triage in La Ferté-Macé.
A Short Biography of EE Cummings (you might like to find a more in-depth one). http://titan.iwu.edu/~wchapman/americanpoetryweb/eecbio.html
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 9/22/2004 08:42:00 pm