Shapeshifter

by Alice Paalen Rahon and Mary Ann Caws

Mary Ann Caws (Translator)

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Shapeshifter

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

Poetry by one of the most powerful female figures in twentieth-century surrealism, now collected in English for the very first time.

Alice Paalen Rahon was a shapeshifter, a surrealist poet turned painter who was born French and died a naturalized citizen of Mexico. Her first husband was the artist Wolfgang Paalen, among her lovers were Pablo Picasso and the poet Valentine Penrose, and over the years her circle of friends included Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Joan Miró, Paul Éluard, Man Ray, and Anaïs Nin. This bilingual edition of Rahon’s poems confirms the achievement of this little-known but visionary writer who defies categorization. Her spellbinding poems, inspired by prehistoric art, lost love, and travels around the globe, weave together dream, fantasy, and madness. For the first time in any language, this book gathers the three collections of poetry Rahon published in her lifetime, along with uncollected and unpublished poems and an album of portraits, manuscript pages, and artworks.
  • ISBN10 1681375001
  • ISBN13 9781681375007
  • Publish Date 14 September 2021
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint The New York Review of Books, Inc