Pierre Reverdy Book order
September 13, 1889 – June 17, 1960
Pierre Reverdy was a French poet whose work emerged from and subsequently influenced the provocative art movements of his day, including Surrealism, Dadaism, and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual apprehension woven through his poetry resonated with the Surrealist credo. Yet, Reverdy remained independent of the prevailing "isms," searching for something beyond their definitions. His writing matured into a mystical mission, seeking, as he wrote, "the sublime simplicity of reality."
- 2022
- 2015
Haunted House
- 72 pages
- 3 hours of reading
John Ashbery's translation of a modern French classic
- 2013
Pierre Reverdy
- 159 pages
- 6 hours of reading
The great Pierre Reverdy, comrade to Picasso and Braque, peer and contemporary of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, is among the most mysteriously satisfying of twentieth-century poets, his poems an uncanny mixture of the simple and the sublime. Reverdy’s poetry has exerted a special attraction on American poets, from Kenneth Rexroth to John Ashbery, and this new selection, featuring the work of fourteen distinguished translators, most of it appearing here for the first time, documents that ongoing relationship while offering readers the essential work of an extraordinary writer. Translated from the French by: John Ashbery Dan Bellm Mary Ann Caws Lydia Davis Marilyn Hacker Richard Howard Geoffrey O’Brien Frank O’Hara Ron Padgett Mark Polizzotti Kenneth Rexroth Richard Sieburth Patricia Terry Rosanna Warren