Surrealist Love Poems

by Mary Ann Caws (Editor)

Love poetry includes, yes, descriptions of the beloved. And images of a fantastic idyll complete with falling stars, the sound of the sea, and beautiful countryside. In the hands of Surrealists, though, love poetry also includes gravediggers and murderers, dice and garbage, snakeskin purses and "the drunken kisses of cyclones." Surrealism, the movement founded in the 1920s on the ashes of Dada's nihilism, embraced absurdity, contradiction, and, to a supreme extent, passion and desire. From André Breton's battle cry of "Mad Love" to the quiet lyricism of Robert Desnos, Surrealist writers and artists obsessively expressed the permutations of that fundamental human state, love, and they did so with the vocabulary of the natural and unnatural world, the explicit language of sex, and a great deal of humor.

Surrealist Love Poems brings together sixty poems—many of them translated into English for the first time—by Surrealists who charged their work through with all forms of eroticism. Within these pages you will read the magnificent love poems of Desnos, which rank among the greatest in twentieth-century poetry, and hear the voices of lesser known "poets" such as Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo. Poems by familiar Surrealists such as Breton, the movement's leader, and Paul Eluard join work by Octavio Paz and Philippe Soupault. Interspersed with the poetry are photographs by Man Ray, Lee Miller, and Claude Cahun. Expertly and energetically translated by Mary Ann Caws, this collection seeks to demonstrate the truth of Breton's words, that "the embrace of poetry like that of bodies/As long as it lasts/Shuts out all the woes of the world."

Genres: Poetry, Art, Love, Anthologies, Fiction, Literature

120 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2001

About the author

Mary Ann Caws is an American author, translator, art historian and literary critic.
She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and on the film faculty. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature, having written biographies of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, has written biographies of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and edited the diaries, letters, and source material of Joseph Cornell. She has also written on André Breton, Robert Desnos, René Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Robert Motherwell, and Edmond Jabès. She served as the senior editor for the HarperCollins World Reader, and edited anthologies including Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Surrealism, and the Yale Anthology of 20th-Century French Poetry. Among others, she has translated Stéphane Mallarmé, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Reverdy, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos, and René Char.
Among the positions she has held are President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971–75 and President, Modern Language Association of America, 1983, Academy of Literary Studies, 1984–85, and the American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91.
She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
In October 2004, she published her autobiography, To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University Alabama Press), and in November 2008, a cookbook memoir: Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France (Pegasus Books).
She was married to Peter Caws and is the mother of Hilary Caws-Elwitt and of Matthew Caws, lead singer of the band Nada Surf. She is married to Dr. Boyce Bennett; they live in New York City.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caws, who edited this wonderful collection, is a surrealism scholar. Why love, for the dada/surrealists? Because thy hated Rationalism, logic, and what it led to, as they saw it: industrialism, war, environmental destruction. Love is the unquantifiable, the irrational, emotional, part of beauty. In this collection we have as we might expect work from the masters of surrealism such as Breton and Eluard, but he also includes surprising and fun work by Picasso, Frida Kahlo... Joyce Mansour and many other women and contemporary writers. Great photographs, too.

[Dah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this collection, and the Man Ray foto
on the cover is one of my favorites.

I have found poems in this book that I have
not seen published anywhere else.

There are a good number of female poets too!

Loaded with a dozen surrealist photographs
that accompany some of the writings.

[حسن · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Woman Who Was Beautiful
Alice Paalen

A Woman Who Was Beautiful
One day
Removed her face
Her head became smooth
Blind and deaf
Safe from the snares of mirrors
And from looks of love
Amid the reeds of the sun
Her head hatched by a sparrohawk could not be found
Secrets much more beautiful
For not having been said
Words not written
Steps erased
Nameless ashes flown away
Without marble plaque
Desecrating memory
So many wings to break
Before nightfall
***

I Want to Sleep with You
Joyce Mansour

I want to sleep with you side by side Our hair intertwined
Our sexes joined
With your mouth for a pillow.
I want to sleep with you back to back With no breath to part us
No words to distract us
No eyes to lie to us
With no clothes on.
To sleep with you breast to breast Tense and sweating
Shining with a thousand quivers Consumed by ecstatic mad inertia Stretched out on your shadow Hammered by your tongue
To die in a rabbit’s rotting teeth Happy.
***

Never Anyone but You
Robert Desnos

Never anyone but you in spite of stars and solitudes
In spite of mutilated trees at nightfall
Never anyone but you will take a path which is mine also The farther you go away the greater your shadow grows
Never anyone but you will salute the sea at dawn when tired of wandering having left the dark-shadowed forests and thistle bushes I shall walk toward the foam
Never anyone but you will place her hand on my forehead and my eyes Never anyone but you and I deny falsehood and infidelity
This anchored boat you may cut its rope
Never anyone but you
The eagle prisoner in a cage pecks slowly at the copper bars turned green What an escape!
It’s Sunday marked by the song of nightingales in the woods of a tender green
the tedium felt by little girls before a cage where a canary flies about while in the solitary street the sun slowly moves its narrow line across the heated sidewalk
We shall pass other lines
Never never anyone but you
And I alone like the faded ivy of suburban gardens alone like glass And you never anyone but you.
***

The Diamond He Didn’t Give You
Paul Eluard

The diamond he didn’t give you, because he only had it as his life was ending, he didn’t know its music any longer, he couldn’t toss it into the air, he had lost the illusion of the sun, he no longer saw the stone of your nakedness, the jewel of this ring turned towards you.
From the arabesque closing the places of drunkenness, the sweet thorn, the skeleton of your thumb and all these foreseeing signs of the animal fire that will swallow in one returning wink of flame your Santa Clara grace.
In the places of drunkenness, the shudder of palms and black wine rages. The figures in jagged relief of yesterday’s judgment keep for the days their half-open hours. Are you sure, oh heroine with lighthouse senses, of having vanquished all mercy and shadow, these two washerwoman sisters? Let’s seize them by the throat, they are without loveliness and for what we want to do with them, the world will detach itself rather quickly from their mane, painting incense along the edge of the fountains.
***

[Greg Converse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it five stars, or is it one?
Is it the real turtle soup, or the neck of the window reflected in my hair?

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to write love poetry like Robert Desnos. I'm using this in my Surrealism and Rebellion class in the fall and am so happy to have it to enjoy slowly this summer.

[McKinnon Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short and delightful collection of poetry focuses on how the art movements of Dada and Surrealism apply not just to the well known physical arts, but to the art of writing and poetry as well. Featuring poems from well known artists like Picasso, Dalí, and Frida Khalo, it was a joy to see the well known artists express themselves in another way!

Fun fact: Did you know Picasso stopped painting for a year and only wrote poetry??

Anyone else here a major art history fan? What’s the most recent poetry book that you’ve read ?

[Presley Pendergrass · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good selection of poems and photos. Quick and thought provoking.

[Cc · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Sienna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her charm is infinite
She flutters hoop-wood over little waves
(Louis Aragon, "The Approach of Love and a Kiss")

hello hello night again
the rain has gravedigger fingers
(Aimé Césaire, "The Automatic Crystal")

This is a slender, sexy, heavy little book, red and black and soft grey, full of "A is B"-style propositions that are impossible and true and occasionally kind of disgusting. Par for the course with the surrealists, right? Caws has compiled a sensual, sensuous set of poems about love and poetry and love of poetry — and men, and women named Rosa, or Georgia — prefacing them with a concise introduction to surrealism and scattering amongst them exquisite photographic jewels like the one by Man Ray on the cover. (My favorite is this 1930 portrait of Renée Jacobi by Jacques-André Boiffard. Raoul Ubac's "La Nébuleuse" is a close second.) The juxtaposition works well; each image complements the poems it separates, making the experience of reading them richer, more satisfying.

I don't like them all, and would argue that the surrealist tag applies more to the authors than these particular writings, but what matters more is that highlights will vary from one reader to the next: the sign of a good editor, and of evocative writing that can repel as easily as attract. The closing piece, a recipe to produce erotic dreams concocted by my favorite surrealist artist, Remedios Varo, is a perfect example. If André Breton's whirling, word associative list-making doesn't do it for you, if Robert Desnos doesn't break you even the tiniest bit, I'm not sure we can be friends. Here are a few others that grabbed hold of me and refuse to let go.

"Remember"
Joyce Mansour

Remember
The jolting flight of my heart
Your excitement
The way my hair ruffles
When I laugh with you
The wind stuffed with smells
Coming before my body aflame
The rubbery grey thickness of the winter evenings
When we heard the rats jingling around
Eating poppies
You and me.

"The Lover"
Paul Eluard

She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair,
She has the shape of my hands,
The colour of my eyes,
She is absorbed in my shadow,
Like a stone upon the sky.

She keeps her eyes open
And doesn't let me sleep.
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make the suns evaporate,
Make me laugh, weep and laugh,
And speak, without a thing to say.

"A Woman Who Was Beautiful"
Alice Paalen

A woman who was beautiful
one day
removed her face
her head became smooth
blind and deaf
safe from the snares of mirrors
and from looks of love

amid the reeds of the sun
her head hatched by a sparrowhawk
could not be found

secrets much more beautiful
for not having been said
words not written
steps erased
nameless ashes flown away
without marble plaque
desecrating memory

so many wings to break
before nightfall.

This collection is worth buying for the love you'll find in it, and for the love you'll share.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was alright, although, clearly, surrealism is not my thing. There were a couple of poems by Paul Eluard that I particularly liked and one by Joyce Mansour. There was a second one by Joyce Mansour that was particularly lovely except for a disgusting image in the second to last line, but then that was what made it a surrealist poem, I guess.

Anyway, not bad and I think I'll keep it around as there were bits throughout that I liked as approaches to love poetry, just very few that I liked in their entirety.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I normally don't care for poetry, at all. I think I bought this for my wife and ended up reading it and thought it was great - not sure if that says anything good about the poems in it or if I just happened to hit on some good writing.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great selection of hauntingly beautiful poems.

[Nico Meyering · Rating 4 out of 5]

Page after page of inspiration for lovers AND poets!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

a great collection of lust, desire, sex and beauty.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 1 out of 5]

awkward translation, maybe that is how surrealist poetry sounds written in a quasi literate tone that is purely cacophonous.