Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos and translated by Mary Ann Caws

This is poetry from France.

Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos translated by Mary Ann Caws is published by Commonwealth Books/Black Widow Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78097684499E12.

Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos, translated and edited by Mary Ann Caws, introduces English readers to one of French Surrealism’s most beloved and haunted figures. Desnos’s work carries dream, humor, erotic address, radio-era verbal play, and the tragic shadow of wartime resistance and deportation. The word “essential” can be dangerous in poetry, but here it signals a broad doorway into a writer whose imagination moved between exuberant freedom and historical catastrophe. Caws’s translations and editorial framing make the volume useful as both introduction and companion. I would read Desnos for the sense that language can be wildly alive even when the world around it is becoming more brutal by the hour.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.