World Food Books

The Crystal Text
by Clark Coolidge

2023, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by City Lights Books / San Francisco

$35.00 - In stock -

Clark Coolidge’s book-length meditation on a crystal–long considered a masterpiece of American avant-garde poetry–returns in a new edition.

“No other poet ever has so exquisitely, and sometimes also turbulently, written sheer sonic wonder into poetry.”–Lyn Hejinian, author of My Life and My Life in the Nineties

In the summer of 1982, Clark Coolidge received an unexpected gift of a crystal; small, clear, entirely unexceptional, the crystal nonetheless provoked the poet into writing what has long been considered his masterpiece, The Crystal Text (1986). A durational poem composed over the course of 10 months, in daybook-like entries of varying length, The Crystal Text is multifaceted and elusive, constantly interrogating itself. Is it a meditation on its titular object like Keats’s “Urn” or a radical investigation of the limits of language as a signifying system? Is the poet channeling the crystal to access its message or is the crystal channeling the poet, drawing language from him to fill its colorless emptiness? Is it dictation or improvisation? Is the poem a record of its own crystalline growth or does it capture the process of consciousness itself?

The Crystal Text refuses to resolve the questions it raises but rather inhabits its various possibilities simultaneously, resulting in one of the major works of late 20th century American avant-garde poetry. This new edition includes a preface by poet and scholar Peter Gizzi and an afterword in which Coolidge discusses the text with poet Jason Morris and City Lights editor Garrett Caples.

Associated with the New York School and subsequently inspiring the Language Poets, Coolidge remains one of the most singular and original American poets of our time.

Preface by Peter Gizzi
Afterword by Jason Morris
Afterword by Garrett Caples

File under: Clark Coolidge Jason Morris Peter Gizzi Garrett Caples City Lights Books / San Francisco Poetry

Pierre Reverdy
Edited by Mary Ann Caws

English
Published by The New York Review of Books / New York

$.00 - Out of stock

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"A poem by Reverdy is a spiritual fact: everything that makes up the human being–sensations, feelings, other men and women–has been passed through the filter of poetry."—Octavio Paz

"Reverdy, with Paul Eluard...is the purest of the writers of his time."—Philippe Soupault

Pierre Reverdy, who, along with artists and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Georges Braque, helped develop cubism and surrealism, is one the greatest of modern French poets and one of the most elusive. His work is at once impersonal and intimate, crystalline and opaque, simplicity itself and mysterious as can be. Paul Auster has described his poems as combining an "intense inwardness with a proliferation of sensual data.... The poet seems to evaporate, to vanish into the haunted country he has created...as if Reverdy had emptied the space of the poem in order to let the reader inhabit it."

Auster is only one of many American writers to be drawn to the mystery of Reverdy's unsettling world. There is also Frank O'Hara, who carried Reverdy's poems in his pocket and wrote (in lines that don't just mention but echo Reverdy) –

and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible
Rene Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it

And John Ashbery has shown himself to be no less devoted than his friend O'Hara to Reverdy, whose poems he has translated throughout his career.

The strength of this new selection of Reverdy's poetry, which includes both translations that have been specially commissioned for this volume along with a range of outstanding earlier ones, is not only to provide a sampling of Reverdy's finest work in all its variety but also to document the appeal it has had for so many of America's best writers and translators. Reverdy is represented by work early and late, from the pioneering Prose Poems of 1915 and Roof Slates of 1918 to his violently conceived and brutally worded, war-haunted poems of 1946 to 1948, entitled The Song of the Dead (originally illustrated by Picasso) to his final Freedom of the Seas of 1960.

The twelve distinguished translators involved are John Ashbery, Dan Bellm, Mary Ann Caws, Lydia Davis, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Howard, Geoffrey O'Brien, Ron Padgett, Mark Polizzotti, Kenneth Rexroth, Richard Sieburth, and Rosanna Warren.

"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."—The Poetry Foundation

"Pierre Reverdy is among the greatest of modern French poets, and certainly among the most elusive. His work is at once impersonal and intimate, crystalline and opaque, simple to the point of austerity. The landscape of his poetry is both instantly recognizable and, devoid of local specificity, imbued with an otherworldly strangeness. He is 'a secret poet for secret readers, ' as Octavio Paz once described him, insisting on the necessity of parsing the silence, the empty spaces between what seems visible in the lines of his poems. Each feels like a fragment of a universe, and yet whole."—Mary Ann Caws on Pierre Reverdy for Poetry Society of America

Soon after the appearance of his first significant collection, Les Épaves du ciel (1924), his writing turned more mystical and Reverdy became a Catholic. In 1926 he retired to a life of ascetic seclusion near the Benedictine monastery at Solesmes and stayed there for the rest of his life.

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of dozens of books, including Glorious Eccentrics- Modernist Women Painting and Writing, Surrealism, and Surprised in Translation, and is the translator of, among many others, André Breton, René Char, Stéphane Mallarmé, Raymond Roussel, Jacques Roubaud, and Ghérasim Luca.

File under: Pierre Reverdy John Ashbery Dan Bellm Mary Ann Caws Lydia Davis Marilyn Hacker Richard Howard Geoffrey O'Brien Ron Padgett Mark Polizzotti Kenneth Rexroth Richard Sieburth Rosanna Warren The New York Review of Books / New York Poetry Fiction / Poetry Surrealism

Marcel Broodthaers
Exhibition History 1964 – 1975 and Selected Works 1957 – 1975

2020, English
Softcover, 880 pages, 31 x 22.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Koenig Books / London

$180.00 - In stock -

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In 1963, the writer Marcel Broodthaers decided to embark on a career in the visual arts. Yet he never severed his ties to poetry and language, whose systems of meaning make up an integral aspect of his work. Retaining a certain distance to the art world, he posed fundamental questions about art —its mediums, its conceptions of what constitutes an artwork, its representation in museums. To this day, his oeuvre takes a critical stand on art’s commercialization strategies. Exhibition-making itself was a key element of Broodthaers’ artistic approach. Documenting all of the artist’s solo exhibitions that took place during his lifetime, this major 880-page catalogue is the first ever to highlight that praxis. The extensive chronology and the accompanying detailed pictorial documentation of the most important works of every year together offer a systematic overview of his oeuvre. In addition to scholarly essays and many texts by Marcel Broodthaers himself, this major publication also features an extensive series of photographic views of the major retrospective at the iconic Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.

File under: Marcel Broodthaers Marcel Broodthaers Maria Gilissen Broodthaers Michael Compton Anny De Decker Sebastian Egenhofer Sabine Folie Gloria Moure Susanne Pfeffer Cord Riechelmann Koenig Books / London Art Poetry Conceptual Art Theory / Essay Curatorial Out-of-print / Rare

Winter Journeys
Georges Perec and the Oulipo

2013, English
Hardcover, 344 pages, 19.8 x 17.5 cm
Published by Atlas Press / London

$55.00 - In stock -

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By Georges Perec, Michèle Audin, Marcel Bénabou, Jacques Bens, Paul Braffort, François Caradec, Frédéric Forte, Paul Fournel, Michelle Grangaud, Jacques Jouet, Etienne Lécroart, Daniel Levin Becker, Harry Mathews, Ian Monk, Hervé Le Tellier, Jacques Roubaud.
Introduction by Alastair Brotchie.
Translation by John Sturrock, Harry Mathews, Ian Monk.

In 1979, Georges Perec wrote a brief entertainment for a publisher’s catalogue, and “The Winter Journey” quickly became his most frequently reprinted short story. Set on the eve of the Second World War, it recounts the discovery of a great literary masterpiece that conceals a scandalous secret at the heart of modern French literature. Every aspect of literary history will have to be rewritten in consequence. However, the War intervenes, and the work is lost forever.

The Oulipo is comprised mainly of French writers who are interested in exploiting “constraints” in literature (Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle which means, roughly, Workshop for Potential Literature). Its members have included luminaries of the calibre of Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Queneau, but it was Perec who perhaps became its most celebrated practitioner. The present volume includes, and then extends Perec’s brief parable. Over two decades his fellow Oulipians have written twenty sequels to this tale, between 1992 and the year of publication. It turns out to be a story resonant with possibilities, and the result is a sort of “hyper-novel”, a novel of digressions, gradual elaboration and bizarre forays into the unexpected. Winter Journeys has grown to become one of the most extended and congenial literary experiments of recent times, and includes meditations on the literary tastes of worms, book-burning in the Nazi period, the delights of plagiarism and the twisted rationality of bibliophilia. It is also a monument to the friendship, ingenuity and collective creativity of this uniquely long-lived group of writers.

File under: Raymond Queneau Georges Perec Michèle Audin Marcel Bénabou Jacques Bens Paul Braffort François Caradec Frédéric Forte Paul Fournel Michelle Grangaud Jacques Jouet Etienne Lécroart Daniel Levin Becker Harry Mathews Ian Monk Hervé Le Tellier Jacques Roubaud Alastair Brotchie John Sturrock Atlas Press / London 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Surrealism Dada Fiction / Poetry Poetry

Varlam Shalamov
The Twenties

2026, English
Softcover, 206 pages, 17 x 11 cm
Published by Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki

$32.00 - Out of stock

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The first English language translation of Varlam Shalamov’s memoires of the twenties Soviet avant-garde, originally written in 1962.

Set in the heady atmosphere of revolutionary Moscow, The Twenties is the young poet and communist Varlam Shalamov's celebration of the new culture of the Revolution, the brave crazy brilliance of his generation of writers, the mass poetry readings, the boundless optimism and creativity. Shalamov writes of them all with the wonderful subtlety and empathy and humour that secured him his place with these dazzling new talents, and have made him known as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Unpublished when it was written in 1962, and until now barely discussed, this first English-language edition of The Twenties, translated, edited and introduced by Cathy Porter, is an exceptional document of the fantastic Soviet twenties from the author of Kolyma Tales.

Shalamov describes the eventful poetry readings of Mayakovsky, the debates of Alexander Voronsky, the lectures of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the collective performances of the Proletkult, and his meetings with Osip Brik and Sergey Tretyakov. He also writes about the tragedies of Boris Pilnyak, Isaac Babel, and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Longer portraits alternate with short sketches and snapshot images. Extraordinary Metropolitan Vvedensky, of the Living Church; Boris Yuzhanin, founder of the Blue Blouse Collective; Esenin's mentor, the peasant poet Nikolai Klyuev; anarchist turned RAPP ideologue Judah Grossmann; poet, improviser and occultist Boris Zubakin; Tatar poet and future Partisan Musa Jalil, and two hundred other exceptional characters. These recollections include also those of Larisa Reisner and Vera Inber, discussions with Boris Pasternak and a description of the "Down with Shame!"' nudist rally.
As Cathy Porter writes in her detailed introduction, Shalamov's twenties were "riveting, ridiculous, marvellous." The people that Shalamov remembers were "the crazy, brave, extraordinary stars of the new culture who make the work so unforgettable and moving."

With The Twenties, Rab-Rab Press introduces a new Shalamov, fused with revolutionary avant-garde dreams.

Varlam Shalamov (Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, 1907–1982) was a Soviet writer, poet, and dissident. A student of law in the 1920s, he was writing poetry and was a member of the Left Opposition, illegally printing and distributing Trotskyist anti-Stalinist samizdats, for which he was sent to Kolyma labour camps. He is best known for his Kolyma Tales, which describes the inhuman trials, incredible suffering and monstrous crimes endured during his twenty years in the Gulag. Despite this, Shalamov never joined the anti-communist religious émigré ranks of Solzhenitsyn and refused to play by the rules of Cold War politics.

Translated, edited and introduced by Cathy Porter.

File under: Cathy Porter Varlam Shalamov Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki Poetry Socialism / Communism / Capitalism Protest / Revolt Theory / Essay

Curdled Skulls: Poems of Bernard Bador
by Bernard Bador

2011, English
Softcover, 118 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
Published by Black Widow Press / Boston

$48.00 - In stock -

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Internationally known collage artist Bernard Bador has been writing some of the most uniquely surrealist poetry of the modern era. Published primarily in anthologies and sought after limited edition books, Curdled Skulls presents a full overview of his works for the last 30 years.

Translated by national Book Award winning poet Clayton Eshleman with the author's help, this is the only survey of his work in the English language.

File under: Bernard Bador Clayton Eshleman Black Widow Press / Boston Poetry Surrealism Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Art

In Between Keep Moving: A Pierre Joris Reader
by Pierre Joris

2026, English
Softcover, 672 pages, 25.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by Contra Mundum Press / New York

$65.00 - In stock -

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Edited by Ariel Resnikoff & Pierre Joris
Afterword by Charles Bernstein

Until now, there has been no single published volume where one might encounter Pierre Joris’ writings in all its variegated forms and styles. This reader contains a diverse selection of his work spanning more than a half-century across poetry and prose, poetics, translation and collaboration.

Working at the tenuous thresholds of writing and translation, Joris navigates the seismic ebb and tide of languages’ winding relations in wide constellations of intersecting streams. A translingual writer, Joris cares for and nurtures, nourishes and tends to those precarious word-worlds surrounding us on all sides, which are conditioned by a constant and ongoing translingual ﬂux: the crisscrossing languages that ﬂicker before our ears if only we are listening for them.

Published on the anniversary of his death, In Between, Keep Moving: The Pierre Joris Reader stands as an opening toward the continuing life of Joris' work.

Pierre Joris (1946–2025) was a Luxembourger-American poet, essayist, translator, and editor. Publishing over 80 books in his lifetime, 22 of which being poetry collections, he was a prolific force in the world of contemporary poetry and translation. Joris lived in various places between Europe, the United States, and North Africa; informed by this, his work moved beyond languages and global boundaries. This talent of transcendence led to his becoming of a recipient of the the highest literary achievement in Luxembourg, the 2020 Batty Weber Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement.

File under: Pierre Joris Ariel Resnikoff Charles Bernstein Contra Mundum Press / New York Fiction / Poetry Poetry

Dictée
by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

1995, English
Softcover, 179 pages, 20.2 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Third Woman Press / Berkeley

$120.00 - In stock -

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First printing of the Third Woman Press re-publication of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, the classic 1982 experimental autobiography first published by Tanam Press in 1982. Founded by Norma Alarcón, which primarily centered Chicana and Latina literature but expanded in 1994 and 1995 to publish works by other women of colour, notably reissuing Cha's masterpiece.

Dictée is the best-known work of the versatile and important Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictée is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha’s mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The elements that unite these women are suffering and the transcendence of suffering. The book is divided into nine parts structured around the Greek Muses. Cha deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry to explore issues of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory. The result is a work of power, complexity, and enduring beauty.

"Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee is both the ancestor and the future of all attempts to remember and rewrite--against the force of being dismembered and rewritten by--colonial/imperial histories and their reiterative, disfiguring shadows. I have, for that reason, the feeling, maybe also the fear, that neither the experience nor the revelation of it will ever come to an end."–Brandon Shimoda, PEN America Literary Award winner and author of The Grave on the Wall

"You think you know what a book can do, then you read Dictee. A life is split by it. A text of multiple modes and languages, moving in a staccato accumulation through histories of war and displacement, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's postcolonial classic created ways and privacies where there were none. Unimaginable what literature would be today without it."–Solmaz Sharif, author of Customs

"Dictee is part memoir, part history, part experimental meditation; a challenging, innovative exploration of Cha's life, her mother's difficult immigrant journey across East Asia and to the United States, the fractured immigrant experience, women warriors, and language itself. . . . An essential work for feminist writers, conceptual artists and Asian American authors and scholars."–New York Times

VG–NF copy.

File under: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Third Woman Press / Berkeley Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Poetry Art Film / Video

American Poetry in the Twentieth Century
by Kenneth Rexroth

1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 180 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Herder and Herder / New York

$40.00 - In stock -

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First 1971 hardcover edition of Rexroth's major study of modern American poetry. "An iconoclastic, gossipy, yet judicious book."—Library Journal

"Poetry has been both personally and professionally the central concern in Kenneth Rexroth's life and art. He is now recognized as one of America's leading poets and critics. A man of sharp and discriminating tastes, supported by keen sensibility and a wide erudition, he here offers a major interpretation of the poetry and poets of modern America, from the radical bohemians at the turn of the century through the leftist poets of the twenties, the reactionaries of the thirties and forties, the gradual emergence of the San Francisco school after the Second World War, to the more recent poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, and Gary Snyder.

For Kenneth Rexroth, American Poetry in the Twentieth Century is a work of re-experiencing the poems themselves, and in the process he provides a controversial new look at a number of the more unimpeachable standard authors—Stevens, Sandburg, Frost, Williams, Jarrell—and boldly redefines the value of such poets as Levertov, Moore, and Robert Lowell.

Kenneth Rexroth was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1905, and grew up in Chicago, New York, and various towns throughout the Midwest. His erudition and range of interests have marked him as both a uniquely individual yet universal man: poet, painter, critic, linguist, guru. Mr. Rexroth now lives in Santa Barbara, California."

Very Good copy in G—VG dust jacket with some light wear to extremities and price clip to inner flap. 1975 previous owner inscription to title page.

File under: Kenneth Rexroth Herder and Herder / New York Poetry Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Art

Seasons Of Sacred Lust
by Kazuko Shiraishi

1978, English
Softcover, 86 pages, 20.5 x 13.2 cm
Reprint,
Published by New Directions / New York

$26.00 - In stock -

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"Kazuko Shiraishi’s poems are outcries, meditations, exclamations of fierce energy and playfulness. It is a joy to hear from a Japanese sister of such breadth and bravery."—Anne Waldman

"Shiraishi is the Allen Ginsberg of Japan."—Kenneth Rexroth

Seasons of Sacred Lust is Kazuko Shiraishi’s challenge to the conventions of Japanese erotic poetry. Born in Vancouver, Canada, Shiraishi was taken to Japan by her family just prior to World War II, and her first poetry (written at age seventeen, published at twenty) emerged from the violence and ugliness of postwar Tokyo. Her earliest work, associated with the avant-garde magazine Vou, shows her talent for vivid, bizarre, almost surrealistic imagery. Her later writing, coming out of her deepening involvement in the world of modern jazz and her increasing emphasis on the performance of her poetry, dramatizes a society of estrangement and alienation where music and poetry provide the only values, and sex the only solace, in a disintegrating world. This selection is translated by a group of Japanese and American poets: Iluko Atsumi, John Solt, Carol Tinker, Yasuyo Morita, and Kenneth Rexroth who provided an informative, perceptive introduction.

Kazuko Shiraishi (1931–2024) was one of Japan's foremost poets. Influenced by abstract art, experimental literature, and avant-garde jazz, Shiraishi was not minimalist, but improvisatory: her poems were written with surreal imagery, at once playful and philosophical, sensitive and compassionate. Shiraishi wrote over twenty books of poetry, read at poetry festivals on every continent, and was awarded the Purple Ribbon Medal from the Emperor of Japan in 1998. New Directions publishes Seasons of Sacred Lust (1978), edited by Kenneth Rexroth; Let Those Who Appear (2002); My Floating Mother, City (2009), and Sea, Land, Shadow (2017).

File under: Kazuko Shiraishi New Directions / New York Poetry

Black Phoenix: Third World Perspective on Contemporary Art and Culture
Edited by Rasheed Araeen and Mahmood Jamal

2022, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 30 x 24 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$53.00 $30.00 - In stock -

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More than a decade after the liberation movements of the 1960s and the historic Bandung and Tricontinental Conferences, which called for social and political alignment and solidarity among the nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in order to dismantle Western imperialism and (neo)colonialism, Black Phoenix issued a rallying cry for the formation of a liberatory arts and culture movement throughout the Third World. International in scope, Black Phoenix positioned diasporic and colonial histories at the center of an evolving anti-racist and anti-imperialist consciousness in late 1970s Britain and beyond—one that would yield complex and nuanced discourses of race, class, and postcolonial theory in the decade that followed. Black Phoenix proposed a horizon for Blackness that transcended racial binaries, across the Third World and the West.

Contributors include art critics, scholars, artists, poets, and writers, including Rasheed Araeen (Pakistan) and Mahmood Jamal (Pakistan), Guy Brett (United Kingdom), Kenneth Coutts-Smith (United Kingdom), Ariel Dorfman (Chile), Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), N. Kilele (Tanzania), Babatunde Lawal (Nigeria), David Medalla (Philippines), Ayyub Malik (Pakistan), Susil Siriwardena (Sri Lanka), and Chris Wanjala (Kenya).

Rasheed Araeen is a Karachi-born, London-based artist, activist, writer, editor, and curator. Aareen founded the critical journals Black Phoenix, Third Text, and Third Text Asia, and took on activist roles with the Black Panthers and Artists for Democracy. His work has been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Chicago; BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead; MAMCO, Geneva; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Tate Britain, London; the 2017 Venice Biennale; and Documenta 14, Athens/Kassel, among others.

Mahmood Jamal was born in Lucknow, India, and moved to Britain from Pakistan in 1967. He published several books of poetry, including Sugar Coated Pill (2007), and translated the Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi (2009) and Faiz: Fifty Poems (2013), among other titles. In 1983, he co-formed the all-Asian Retake Film and Video Collective production company, and initiated Epicflow Films in 1989. Jamal worked as an independent producer and writer; produced several documentary series, including Islamic Conversations; was a lead writer on Britain’s first Asian soap, Family Pride (1991–92), and wrote and produced Turning World (1996) for Channel4 television. He died in London in December 2020.

Last copy with a knock to bottom spine corner.

File under: Rasheed Araeen Rasheed Araeen Primary Information / New York Periodicals Art Theory / Essay Sociology / Politics Poetry Fiction / Poetry Protest / Revolt SALE

Visual Poetics: Concrete Poetry and its Contexts
An exhibition curated by Nicholas Zurbrugg

1989, English
Softcover, 74 pages, 27.2 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by MOCA / Brisbane

$50.00 - In stock -

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Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Visual Poetics: Concrete Poetry and its Contexts at MOCA, Brisbane, 1989, curated by Nicholas Zurbrugg. Heavily illustrated throughout in b/w, Zurbrugg "attempts to trace the evolution of the visual textual work, from Dadaist pioneers like Raoul Hausmann and Marcel Janco; Letterist pioneers like Isidore Isou and Maurice Lemaître; the cut-ups of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and the 'flower-power' typography of the psychadelic era; to the optical and concrete poems of Pierre Garnier, Eugen Gomringer, and the Brazilian 'Noigrandes' poets. Subsequent developments are traced in the work of Australian poets such as Allan Riddell and Alex Selenitsch; English poets and artists like John Furnival and Dom Sylvester Houédard; the Argentinian poet Edgardo Antonio Vigo; the French Approches and Agentzia poets; the Japanese VOU photo-poets; and the Italian Lotta Poetica poets. As becomes evident, a very formal, geometrical typographic poetry gradually gives way to texts incorporating visual imagery and material of all kinds. Particular attention is also given to three of the most distinctive visual poets of the last quarter century: Robert Lax, lan Hamilton Finlay and Henri Chopin. Each of these poets has gradually refined and extended their work, exploring differing domains of abstraction and/or political, social and metaphysical allusion."–from the introduction.
It documents many of the key publications, artist's statements, and includes a section 'Visual Poetics in Brisbane'.

Includes the work of: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Chris Mann, William Burroughs, Henri Chopin, Jas H. Duke, thalia, Pete Spence, π.O., Alan Riddell, Richard Tipping, Gordon Bennett, Alex Selenitsch, Marcel Janco, Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, Malcolm Enright, Hansjörg Mayer, Futura Editions, Kitasono Katue, Pierre Garnier, Diena Georgetti, Pierre Garnier, Maurizio Nannucci, Eugen Gomringer, Brion Gysin, Shane Kneipp, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Rudi Krausmann, Davida Allen, Robert Lax, John Furnival, Dom Sylvester Houédard, bp Nichol, The Situationist International, Madonna Staunton, Ben Vautier, Adam Wolter, Tom Phillips, Thomas A. Clark, and many more.

Nicholas Zurbrugg is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Griffith University, Brisbane. He is the author of Beckett and Proust, and has published widely on Beckett, Proust, Burroughs, and theories of the avant-garde and Post-Modernism.

Good copy, knock to bottom of spine, some wear to covers.

File under: Maurice Lemaitre Ian Hamilton Finlay Bob Cobbing Chris Mann William Burroughs Henri Chopin Jas H. Duke thalia Pete Spence π.O. Alan Riddell Richard Tipping Gordon Bennett Alex Selenitsch Marcel Janco Isidore Isou Malcolm Enright Hansjörg Mayer Futura Editions Kitasono Katue Pierre Garnier Diena Georgetti Maurizio Nannucci Eugen Gomringer Brion Gysin Shane Kneipp Edgardo Antonio Vigo Rudi Krausmann Davida Allen Robert Lax John Furnival Dom Sylvester Houédard bp Nichol The Situationist International Madonna Staunton Ben Vautier Adam Wolter Tom Phillips Thomas A. Clark Nicholas Zurbrugg MOCA / Brisbane Concrete Poetry Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Group Shows / Collections Australian Art Art Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Furnitures: The Magazine of North American Ideophonics (lot of 5 issues)

1989–1993, English
Softcover (staple–bound), various formats, unpaginated
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Mark Nowak / Minnesota

$90.00 - In stock -

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Rare, virtually undocumented issues of Mark Nowak's sound-art / poetry zine, Furnitures: The Magazine of North American Ideophonics, self-published in the late 1980's into the early 1990's. Issues 7, 8, 9, 11, & 12, c. 1989–1993. Photocopied and stapled, the issues feature visual scores, experimental/concrete/visual poetry, essays, mappings, performance pieces, reflections, reviews and research by experimental American poets, composers, artists, environmentalists, and anthropologists, bound in various formats and laid out to correspond with the contributors' work. A wonder of a publication from the world of American environmental sound and poetics.

No. 7: Stephen Ratcliffe, Pauline Oliveros, Ralph Knowles, Hugh Brody.
No. 8: Alan Drake, Philip Blackburn, David Dunn, Karl Young, Kenneth Gaburo.
No. 9: Rod Lohin.
No. 11: Joe Catalano, Elaine Equi, John Bradley, Lisa Jarnot, Maurice Kenny, Michelle Perez, Karl Kempton, Jim Barnes, George Albon, Kenneth Gaburo, Katie Yates, Dick Higgins, N. Sean Williams.
No. 12: Theodore Enslin, Diane Glancy, Elaine Barkin, R. Murray Schafer.

Mark Nowak is an American poet, as well as cultural critic, playwright and essayist, from Buffalo, New York.

All G-VG copies with light wear/age to extremities, neat previous postage folds to some, some marking. Not post–marked.

File under: Pauline Oliveros David Dunn Kenneth Gaburo Elaine Barkin Stephen Ratcliffe Pauline Oliveros Ralph Knowles Hugh Brody Alan Drake Philip Blackburn David Dunn Karl Young Kenneth Gaburo Rod Lohin Joe Catalano Elaine Equi John Bradley Lisa Jarnot Maurice Kenny Michelle Perez Karl Kempton Jim Barnes George Albon Katie Yates Dick Higgins N. Sean Williams Theodore Enslin Diane Glancy Elaine Barkin R. Murray Schafer Mark Nowak / Minnesota Periodicals Sound / Music Performance / Dance / Theater Concrete Poetry Poetry Art Ecology / Earth Anthropology

Kerb Your Dog TEXTBOOK 1992
Edited by John Nixon and John Young

1992, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 14.5 x 20.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Kerb Your Dog / Sydney

$100.00 - Out of stock

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Rare copy of Kerb Your Dog, the experimental Australian artist-edited anthology of artist pages, published in Sydney, Australia. Edited by John Nixon and John Young and published in an edition of 500 copies, this volume from 1992 – "TEXTBOOK" – addresses the question "what is contemporary art?", featuring pages by John Barbour, Eugene Carchesio, Tony Clark, Peter Cripps, Aleks Danko, John Dunkley-Smith, Clinton Garofano, Ross Harley, Tim Johnson, Lyndal Jones, Maria Kozic, Rosemary Laing, Shelley Lasica, Lindy Lee, Geoff Lowe, Robert Macpherson, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Susan Norrie, David O'Halloran, Robert Owen, Mike Parr, Jacky Redgate, Carole Roberts, Vivienne Shark Lewitt, Peter Tyndall, Ken Unsworth, Geoffrey Weary, Wood / Marsh Architecture Pty. Ltd., John Young, and an essay by Janet Shanks. An invaluable collection of artist's "texts" from Australia in this very scarce document.

As New copy, light wear only.

File under: Aleks Danko Carole Roberts Clinton Garofano David O'Halloran Eugene Carchesio Geoff Lowe Geoffrey Weary Jacky Redgate John Barbour John Dunkley-Smith John Nixon John Young Ken Unsworth Lindy Lee Lyndal Jones Maria Kozic Mike Parr Peter Cripps Peter Tyndall Robert Macpherson Robert Owen Rose Nolan Rosemary Laing Ross Harley Shelley Lasica Susan Norrie Tim Johnson Tony Clark Vivienne Shark LeWitt Janet Shanks Kerb Your Dog / Sydney Art Australian Art Fiction / Poetry Minimal Art Out-of-print / Rare Painting Periodicals Poetry Theory / Essay Conceptual Art Concrete Poetry Sculpture / Installation

Alex Selenitsch
four 4-colour books

2008 / 2015, English
4 hand-sewn books in a plastic file (softcover books w. cut/folded coloured papers, white photocopy title sheet), each book 16 pages, 21 x 21 cm
Ed. of 32, numbered,
Published by Alex Selenitsch / Melbourne

$320.00 - In stock -

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Artist book edition published in an edition of 32 hand-numbered copies. Each edition is made up of 4 hand-sewn books in a plastic file. Each book comprises 16 pages of cut/folded coloured papers presenting a colour narrative: four pastel ‘primaries’ making colour tableaux, introduced and closed off by black and white covers.

The coloured pages are assembled from A3 sheets which have been halved: accurately in two cases (straight line orthogonal and straight line incline) or approximately (sinusoidal and horizontal tear). The cut-outs on the cover hint at the kind of division or halving that the coloured sheets have been subjected to. Both halves are used in the edition of each book, so that each edition of 32 copies with 4 folded sheets (giving 16 pages) uses 64 sheets. For the approximate cuts (sinusoidal and horizontal tear), there is some variation inside the edition.

File under: Alex Selenitsch Alex Selenitsch / Melbourne Art Australian Art Fiction / Poetry Objects / Ephemera / A/V Poetry

Bomb
Poetry by Clark Coolidge & Collages by Keith Waldrop

2000, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 25.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Granary Books / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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First edition, out–of–print.

A landmark first-time collaboration between poet Clark Coolidge and writer/scholar/artist Keith Waldrop, Bomb is a meditation on a book of photographs that documents the Manhattan Project. Coolidge's 30-page poem begins with epigraphs by Democritus, Gregory Corso and André Breton with Paul Eluard, and continues in an elliptical, glancing narrative style that lucidly investigates a subject often too traumatic to consider directly: the impact of the atomic bomb on our everday lives. As Coolidge puts it, the general tendency has been to "put the bomb in a glass vase/add dust and forget." Like all of Coolidge's work, Bomb is sharp, stark and rhythmic; the poet here tangles with the dreamlike oddness of the photographs at hand in fits and starts of highly textured language. Keith Waldrop's series of collages are literal reworkings of the original pictures: deep blacks and bright whites excavated from the book, remade here in the image of the poem.

Designed by Emily Y. Ho.

VG–NF copy. First ed. of 1500 copies.

File under: Keith Waldrop Clark Coolidge Keith Waldrop Granary Books / New York Poetry Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Discourse Networks, 1800/1900
by Friedrich Kittler

1990, English
Softcover, 496 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$50.00 - In stock -

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This is a highly original book about the connections between historical moment, social structure, technology, communications systems, and what is said and thought using these systems - notably literature. The author focuses on the differences between "discourse networks" in 1800 and 1900, in the process developing a new analysis of the shift from romanticism to modernism. The work might be classified as a German equivalent to the New Historicism of American literary scholars, both in the intellectual influences to which Kittler responds and in his concern to ground literature in the most concrete details of historical reality.

The artful structure of the book begins with Goethe's Faust and ends with Valery's Faust. In the 1800 section, the author discusses how language was learned, the emergence of the modern university, the associated beginning of the interpretation of contemporary literature, and the canonization of literature. Among the writers and works Kittler analyzes in addition to Geothe's Faust are Schlegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Golden Pot," and Goethe's Tasso.

The 1900 section argues that the new discourse network in which literature is situated in the modern period is characterized by new technological media - film, the photograph, and the typewritten page - and the crisis that these caused for literary production. Along the way, the author discusses the work of Nietzsche, Gertrude Stein, Mallarme, Bram Stoker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others.

VG copy, light wear to boards.

File under: E. T. A. Hoffmann Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Paul Valéry Stéphane Mallarmé Gertrude Stein Rainer Maria Rilke Sigmund Freud Franz Kafka Friedrich Kittler Bram Stoker Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Surrealism Poetry Psychoanalysis Philosophy

Schriftenreihe Für Künstlerpublikationen Band 3: Sound Art
Edited by Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Sabine Breitsameter, Winfried Pauleit

2006, English / German
Softcover (w. CD), 240 pages, 23.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Salon Verlag / Cologne

$60.00 - In stock -

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‘Sound Art between Avant-Garde and Pop Culture’, a documentation of a conference in 2005.

“Sound Art … is inconceivable without the acoustic, sound-related, tonal, onomatopoeic, auditive or radiophonic aspect. Yet Sound Art is not constituted by this aspect alone, but emerges only in association withmusical, artistic and literary concepts. Sound Art encompasses works characterized by acoustic interdisciplinarity, regardless of the context. Attempts to draw the boundaries of Sound Art from the perspective of art or music theory are thus doomed to failure. It is its uncompromising, subversive openness which accounts for the fascination of Sound Art.”

With text contributions besides by the editors by Barbara Barthelmes, Julia Kursell, Martin Maurach, Daniel Gethmann, Wolfgang Hagen, Peter Frank, Stan Hanson, Heidi Grundmann, Barbara Flückiger, with a CD with audio examples of more than 42 minutes by Majakovskij, Schwitters, Hausmann, Artaud and others, text in German and English.

VG copy, complete with CD.

File under: Antonin Artaud Kurt Schwitters Raoul Hausmann Vladimir Mayakovsky Barbara Barthelmes Julia Kursell Martin Maurach Daniel Gethmann Wolfgang Hagen Peter Frank Stan Hanson Heidi Grundmann Barbara Flückiger Anne Thurmann-Jajes Sabine Breitsameter Winfried Pauleit Antonin Artaud Vladimir Mayakovsky Salon Verlag / Cologne Sound / Music Fluxus Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Concrete Poetry Poetry Dada Situationism / Lettrism

The Testament (& Other Texts)
by Rainer Maria Rilke

2025, English
Softcover, 202 pages,‎ 20.4 x 12.7 cm
Published by Contra Mundum Press / New York

$48.00 - In stock -

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WORLD PREMIERE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Rilke’s Testament opens with the outbreak of WWI, a devastating world event that prevents the poet from returning to the “incomparable city of Paris,” and which is entwined with his own debilitating crises.

In this decisive period, before which recovery or death waits, Rilke undergoes a kind of auto-da-fé and gives us a record of his failure and achievement. With insights into what he called his peculiar fate, the poet forges a will and testament, which he says “will remain his last, even if his heart still faced many years of challenges ahead.” Is this the final word on his struggle between love in life and love transformed into the mosaic of art?

Written while suffering an impasse with the Duino Elegies and just before he and Merline Klossowska discover the Chateau de Muzot, which would become a fertile sanctuary for the nomadic poet, Rilke turns to translation as a pontifex to carry him through the muteness of his crises. Having at last opened some free associative realm, he begins sketching terse reflections, lyrical draft letters, and dense, wistful prose, fragmentary writings that speak to the powers of destruction and creation.

Long secret, this enigmatic and charged series of experimental texts is the record of the close of a remarkable winter, wherein the work of poetry, the artist’s struggle with life, is tested in the crucible of solitude and the sinister expanse of blank pages. An illuminating ars poetica, Rilke’s Testament constitutes the mortal risk of not going beyond love, and the risk of the potential death of the artist, where the silencing of the logos puts creative potency under threat.

This world premiere English translation also includes essays on politics, poetry, sound, the sacred and sexuality, and the complete poem sequence “From the Literary Estate of Count C.W.," all works dating from the 'testament years.' The Testament (& Other Texts) documents a creative interregnum and is the dark passageway between the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus.

Edited by Rainer J. Hanshe
Translated with an introduction by Mark Kanak

File under: Rainer Maria Rilke Mark Kanak Rainer J. Hanshe Contra Mundum Press / New York Fiction / Poetry Poetry Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Sociology / Politics

Oulipo Compendium
Edited by Harry Mathews & Alistair Brotchie

1998, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 23 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Atlas Press / London

$130.00 - Out of stock

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"Oulipians: rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape."—Raymond Queneau

What do Marcel Duchamp and Italo Calvino have in common? The Oulipo, or Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle. This “Workshop for Potential Literature” was founded by Raymond Queneau and friends in 1960 to find out how abstract restrictions could be combined with imaginative writing (as in Georges Perec’s celebrated novel written without the letter e). Still formidably active, the Oulipo is now recognised as the most original, productive and provocative literary enterprise to appear since the last war. This Compendium is the first comprehensive survey of the group in any language. It includes extensive selections from the work of Oulipians, analyses of their important works, and descriptions of their methods. Further sections cover related groups working in the fields of art, detective fiction, comic strips, even cuisine. A vital resource for creativity in all areas.

The result of a five year collaboration with the literary group that was still almost unknown in the English-speaking world, this is the most extensive exploration of the group’s methods, intentions and history. Includes works by/about Noël Arnaud, John Ashbery, Jacques Barine, Tristan Bastit, Marcel Bénabou, Jacques Bens, André Blavier, Paul Braffort, Italo Calvino, François Caradec, Jacques Carelman, Bernard Cerquiglini, Richard Curtis, Francis Debyser, Jacques Duchateau, Marcel Duchamp, Luc Étienne, Thieri Foulc, Paul Fournel, Paul Gayot, Michelle Grangaud, Thierry Groensteen, Jacques Jouet, François Le Lionnais, Hervé Le Tellier, Harry Mathews, Ian Monk, Oskar Pastior, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Pierre Rosenstiehl, Jacques Roubaud, Gilbert Sorrentino, Stefan Themerson, Keith Waldrop, Dallas Wiebe, and more.

“Oulipo Compendium is a late 20th-century kabala, a labyrinth of literary secrets that will lure the unitiated into rethinking everything they know about books and writing. A nutty, one-of-a-kind book, the definitive encyclopaedia of contemporary word-magic.”–Paul Auster

“An indispensable book for everyone who cares about literature.”–Susan Sontag

“Book of the year.”–Giles Foden in The Guardian.

"By substituting formidably strict forms for Surrealism's controversial notion of "total liberty," the Oulipo has created an amazingly beautiful and profound body of literature, which this long-awaited volume at last brings to the attention of English-speaking readers."—John Ashbery

VG copy with light wear/marking to block edges/extremities, no spine creases.

File under: Harry Mathews Alistair Brotchie Noël Arnaud John Ashbery Jacques Barine Tristan Bastit Marcel Bénabou Jacques Bens André Blavier Paul Braffort Italo Calvino François Caradec Jacques Carelman Bernard Cerquiglini Richard Curtis Francis Debyser Jacques Duchateau Marcel Duchamp Luc Étienne Thieri Foulc Paul Fournel Paul Gayot Michelle Grangaud Thierry Groensteen Jacques Jouet François Le Lionnais Hervé Le Tellier Ian Monk Oskar Pastior Georges Perec Raymond Queneau Pierre Rosenstiehl Jacques Roubaud Gilbert Sorrentino Stefan Themerson Dallas Wiebe Keith Waldrop Atlas Press / London 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Dada Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Poetry

OULIPO LABORATORY
Italo Calvino, Paul Fournel, Jacques Jouet, Harry Mathews & Raymond Queneau

1995, English
Softcover, 174 pages, 19 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Atlas Press / London

$55.00 - Out of stock

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Scarce out–of–print first 1995 edition. Italo Calvino, Paul Fournel, Jacques Jouet, Harry Mathews & Raymond Queneau.
Introduced by Alastair Brotchie.
Translated by Harry Mathews, Iain White, & Warren Motte Jr.

Texts from the Bibliothèque Oulipiènne, prefaced by two manifestos by François Le Lionnais. The Bibliothèque Oulipiènne is comprised of small fascicles published by the Oulipo (more than 200 to date), usually containing texts from a single member of the group. In this collection we translated six very various issues. Le Lionnais’s manifestos laid out some of the principles of the group; Queneau’s analysis went back to one of its earliest ideas, that of combining literature and mathematics (in this case the theses of David Hilbert’s); Calvino revealed the structures underlying his If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller…; Fournel gave us a modern realist novel that omits the entire text of the work except its peripheral elements; Jouet restored to us the love poetry written in the Great Ape language from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs; Berge, a professional mathematician of some renown, applied his methods to the detective story; and finally Mathews offered two series of poems, including one consisting of limericks which appear to rhyme but do not.

Very Good copy, light wear to extremities.

File under: Alistair Brotchie Harry Mathews Iain White Warren Motte Jr. Italo Calvino Paul Fournel Jacques Jouet Raymond Queneau François Le Lionnais Atlas Press / London Art Fiction / Poetry Poetry Out-of-print / Rare 'Pataphysics / Oulipo

The Essential Mann
The writings of Chris Mann; compiled by π.O. (Pi.O.)

1993, English
Softcover (staple–bound), 38 pages, 15 x 10.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Collective Effort Press / Melbourne

$160.00 - Out of stock

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Very rare copy of this wonderful pocket–book of late Melbourne artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann's writings, compiled and introduced by renowned Greek-Australian, working class, anarchist poet П. O. (or π.O., or Pi O, or Pi-O b. 1951) in the Collective Effort press A6 series. Terrific intro and selection of Mann's texts, with a textual portrait of Mann by poet-singer Ashley Higgs.

Chris Mann (1949–2018) was an Australian-American composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do". Mann was the son of German Jewish refugees, Ruth and Peter Mann, who settled in Melbourne and founded the Discurio music store Score record label in the 1960s, producing some of Australia's first recordings of Australian folk music as well as jazz, classical and Aboriginal music. Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field. Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg. Mann has recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes. Mann has also participated in the 60x60 project. Mann taught in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School. He died in September 2018, survived by his wife and two children.

A foundational figure in Melbourne’s performance poetry scene, π.o., born in Katerini, Greece, and raised in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, is known for his use of concrete poetry, vernacular, and wordplay and is a prolific author and editor (fitzrot, "925", Unusual Work, Collective Effort), publishing numerous collections focusing on working-class life, non-Anglo-Celtic migrant experiences, and urban culture. He won the 2020 Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Heide and the 2024 Patrick White Literary Award for his body of work. Balancing his artistic career with a career as a draughtsman, π.o. lives in Preston and continues to edit the experimental magazine Unusual Work and is regarded as a master at capturing the daily life and politics of Melbourne.

VG–NF copy with some light wear.

File under: Chris Mann π.O. Ashley Higgs Chris Mann π.O. Collective Effort Press / Melbourne Australian Art Performance / Dance / Theater Art Out-of-print / Rare Australian Poetry Poetry

You've Always Been Wrong
by René Daumal

1995, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 166 pages, 22 x 13 cm
Published by University of Nebraska Press / Lincoln

$80.00 - In stock -

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Translated by Thomas Vosteen.

You've Always Been Wrong is a collection of prose and poetic works by the French writer René Daumal (1908-1944). A fitful interloper among the Surrealists, Daumal rejected all forms of dogmatic thought, whether religious, philosophical, aesthetic, or political. Much like the Surrealists (and French theorists of more recent decades), Daumal saw in the strict forms and certainties of traditional metaphysics a type of thought that enslaves people even as it pretends to liberate them. These "cadavers of thought," Daumal wrote with youthful bravado, "must be met with storms of doubt, blasphemes, and kerosene for the temples." Daumal tied Surrealism with mystical traditions. A devoted student of Eastern religions, philosophy, and literature, he combined his skepticism about Western metaphysics with a mystic's effort to maintain intense wakefulness to the present moment and to the irreducible particularity of all objects and experience. Such wakefulness, according to Daumal, leads inevitably to an overwhelming (and redemptive) "vision of the absurd." Daumal's important place in French culture of the late 1920s and 1930s has been assured by both his writings and his role as cofounder of the avant-garde journal Le Grand Jeu. Written between 1928 and 1930, You've Always Been Wrong reveals Daumal's thought as it was coalescing around the rejection of Western metaphysics and the countervailing allure of Eastern mysticism. Thomas Vosteen's nuanced translation provides English-language readers with a provocative introduction to this iconoclastic author. Thomas Vosteen has taught French language and literature for over twenty-five years, during which time he has also served as a freelance interpreter for the U.S. Department of State. He is currently an assistant professor of French at Eastern Michigan University.

File under: Rene Daumal University of Nebraska Press / Lincoln Fiction / Poetry Poetry Surrealism 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Occult / Esoterica

Little Castles of Bohemia: Prose and Poetry
by Gérard de Nerval

2025, English
Softcover, 122 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$36.00 - In stock -

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Translated, with an introduction by Napoleon Jeffries
Illustrations by Alfred Prunaire

We were young, always gay, often wealthy . . . But I’ve just struck a gloomy chord: our palace is razed to the ground. I trampled through its debris this past autumn.

Although Gérard de Nerval had originally intended it to be a small anthology of his early poetry, his 1853 Little Castles of Bohemia ended up as something more. As could be said of all his last works, the book was an effort at stability: worn out and financially impoverished from his travels and spells of mental turmoil, Nerval gathered his past writing in an attempt at assembling some sort of posterity, at creating a home for the vagabond pieces.

The melancholic, wandering castles presented here house pieces gathered from the range of Nerval’s literary life, from his autobiographic reminiscences of the bohemian neighborhood of Le Doyenné (destroyed by Baron Hausmann the year before this book’s initial publication), the lyrical “odelettes” that established Nerval as a poet early on, the one-act theatrical “proverb” Corilla, and the mystical sonnets of madness and existential despair that concluded his career.

In assembling together the shards of Nerval’s life, these castles depict both the birth and the decline of the Bohemian, as well as the struggle between Romantic idealism and realism that would formulate the tragic conclusions to the specific life of Nerval and the lives in general of the Bohemians of his time. The collapse of the boundary between art and life here leads to ruins.

Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855) was a writer, poet, and translator who wedded French and German romanticism and transformed his research into mystic thought and his bouts of mental illness into such visionary works as the posthumously published Aurélia, or Dream and Life. After his suicide, his work would grow in stature and go on to influence Marcel Proust, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Michel Leiris, and countless others.

File under: Gérard de Nerval Napoleon Jeffries Wakefield Press / Cambridge Surrealism Fiction / Poetry Poetry