Tulips and Chimneys is a collection of poetry by E. E. Cummings, published in 1923 (see 1923 in poetry). This collection is the first dedicated exclusively to Cummings' poetry; his work had been published previously alongside others' in Eight Harvard Poets.
Though most now know the title to be Tulips & Chimneys (with an ampersand), Cummings's original title request was disregarded by the publisher Thomas Seltzer, who changed the ampersand to the word "and." Eventually, the book would come to be published together with the collection &, under Cummings's original title.
Tulips and Chimneys features, among others, the poems "All in green went my love riding", "Thy fingers make early flowers of", and "Buffalo Bill's". The original manuscript contained 152 poems of which only 86 appeared in this volume. 41 of the other poems later appeared in XLI Poems, and the balance (along with 34 new poems) were privately printed by the author in the simply named "&" in 1925.
Famous quotes containing the words tulips and/or chimneys:
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)