Conductors of the Pit: Artaud, Holan, Césaire, Vallejo, Csoori, Breton, Neruda, Radnoti, Rimbaud, Hierro, Bador, Juhasz, Szocs

by Clayton Eshleman (Editor)

"Forget the orchestra/ conduct the pit!" National Book Award and PEN winning translator Clayton Eshleman commands both himself and his muses in a search for "the abyss, the recesses of the mind, the darkness of political domination, the gulf between worlds."

Featuring the major forces behind the surrealist movement from around the world including Rimbaud, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Aime Cesaire, Andre Breton, Vladimir Holan and Antonin Artaud, Clayton Eshleman's essential study brings these poets to a new generation of creative hearts.

From Rimbaud’s obscure and harrowing "Drunken Boat" with its "very sea whose sobbing made my churning sweet" to Pablo Neruda’s "tongue of death looking for the dead,/the needles of death looking for the thread," Conductors of the Pit is unlike any poetry anthology of its kind. In this mesmerizing and fully annotated volume, the major works of experimental poetry that have shaped the modern age are at last available side by side, along with a historical and cultural overview by the editor.

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2005

About the author

Eshleman is an American poet, translator, and editor.

Eshleman has been translating since the early 1960s. He and José Rubia Barcia jointly prepared The Complete Posthumous Poetry of César Vallejo (1978) and won the U.S. National Book Awardin category Translation. He has also translated books by Aimé Césaire (with Annette Smith), Pablo Neruda, Antonin Artaud, Vladimir Holan, Michel Deguy and Bernard Bador.

Eshleman founded and edited two of the most seminal and highly-regarded literary magazines of the period, Caterpillar and Sulfur.

Sometimes he is mentioned in the company of the "ethno-poeticists" associated with Jerome Rothenberg, including: Armand Schwerner, Rochelle Owens, Kenneth Irby, Robert Kelly, Jed Rasula, Gustaf Sobin, and John Taggart. He is now Professor Emeritus at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[Zac Hawkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun! I consider myself somewhat well versed in the surrealist and decadent poetics but there are a few scribes here I was unfamiliar with, and will now have to check out.

[Richard]

Featuring the major forces behind the surrealist movement from around the world, including Rimbaud, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Aime Cesaire, Andre Breton, Vladimir Holan and Antonin Artaud, Conductors of the Pit brings these poets to a new generation of creative hearts. From Rimbaud's obscure and harrowing "Drunken Boat" with its "very sea whose sobbing made my churning sweet" to Pablo Neruda's "tongue of death looking for the dead,/the needles of death looking for the thread," Conductors of the Pit is unlike any poetry anthology of its kind. In this mesmerizing and fully annotated volume, the major works of experimental poetry that have shaped the modern age are at last available side by side, along with a historical and cultural overview by the editor.

[M Alan Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good as an introduction to any of these authors. If you're already a fan, you might be a bit disappointed...

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rimbaud Rules!