Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960) is one of the greatest and most influential figures in modern French poetry. He founded the journal Nord-Sud with Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, which drew together the first Surrealists. Associated with painters such as Picasso, Gris and Braque, he has been called a Cubist poet, for conventional structure is eliminated in his poesie brut (`raw poetry'), much as the painters cut away surface appearance to bring through the underlying forms. But Reverdy went beyond Cubist desolation to express a profound spiritual doubt and his sense of a mystery in the universe forever beyond his understanding. Andre Breton hailed him in the first Surrealist Manifesto as `the greatest poet of the time'. Louis Aragon said that for Breton, Soupault, Eluard and himself, Reverdy was `our immediate elder, the exemplary poet'.
- ISBN10 0916390462
- ISBN13 9780916390464
- Publish Date 1 July 1991 (first published 17 January 1969)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 23 June 2021
- Imprint Wake Forest University Press
- Edition Us ed.
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 173
- Language English