Surrealist Poetry in English

by Edward B. Germain (Editor), Various

The surrealist movement was founded in France in 1924, brother of the anarchist Dada, heir of experiments in 19th century literature. In England, the movement arose as the logical evolution of 19th century literature's dominant concern - the psychopathology of the artist's mind. Being unconcerned with conventional morality, it had few affinities with the humanist tradition of literature and saw the classical tradition as antithetical to literature altogether. This book examines surrealist poetry in English literature.

Genres: Poetry

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

English and American Surrealist Poetry is in a roughly chronological order, starting with poems from the 1920s and ending with poems from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the poems are in conventional form, with rhyming lines and division into stanzas, while many more of them employ free verse; others still are in prose form, and a few experiment with the placement of words and lines on the page.

Many of the poems appear to employ automatism as a technique, most obvious in those instances in which there is a chaos of imagery, but there are also others that have some kind of structure or unifying theme, including love lyrics, narrative poems and ekphrastic poems.

This is probably one of my favorite poetry anthologies, as it includes a number of poems I like a lot, many of them by authors of whom I have never otherwise heard. Much of the work appearing here, however, is by poets whom I think are fairly well-known, including Dylan Thomas, Randall Jarrell, John Ashbery and Donald Hall (in this connection, I would mention that the book includes work by only four or five female writers--Emily Holmes Coleman, Djuna Barnes and Anne Waldman, to name a few examples).

Along with the original poems, there are also translations into English of poems by European writers, with David Gascoyne translating works by Breton, Dalí and Picasso, for instance, and Robert Bly translating works by Neruda and Vallejo.

Acquired Jul 10, 1983
Glengarry Bookstore, Alexandria, Ontario

Review added Jun 9, 2022

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surrealism, as we know it, emerged from the movement founded in France circa 1924 by Andre Breton. The influence of Tristan Tzara's Dada, to which Breton was briefly affiliated, has been widely acknowledged. Initially considered a literary movement, Surrealism has since become more commonly associated with painting (specifically the paintings of Salvador Dali, who caused a stir when he claimed: "I am Surrealism"). Likewise, Surrealism is commonly associated with the French.
Though few English-language poets are exclusively surrealist, this selection demonstrates the range of Surrealism's literary impact. From David Gascoyne, one of the earliest and most dedicated British advocates of surrealists, and Kenneth Patchen, the closest American counterpart with regards to his political and transcendental concerns, to numerous other poets who directly incorporated or were indirectly influenced by Surrealism, including: A.J.M. Smith, Ruthven Todd, Charles Madge, Djuna Barnes, Dylan Thomas, Charles Henri Ford, Thomas Merton, Weldon Kees, Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, H.R. Hays, Robert Bly, George Hitchcock, Donald Hall, Bill Knott, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Tom Clark, James Tate, Mark Strand, Robin Magowan, John Haines, Andrei Codrescu, W.S. Merwin, and Michael McClure (among others)...

A.J.M. Smith...

Nobody said Apples for nearly a minute -
I thought I should die.
Finally, though, the second sardine
from the end, on the left,
converted a try.
(It brought down the house.
The noise was terrific.
I dropped my glass eye.)

Meanwhile Mr Baldwin
managed to make himself heard.
He looks sad
but with characteristic aplomb said
keep calm there is no cause for alarm.
Two soldiers' crutches had sexual intercourse
on the spot with a little bit of fluff
from a lint bandage in the firing chamber
of a 12 inch gun.
People agreed not to notice.
The band played a little bit louder.
It was all very British.

- Political Intelligence, pg. 89

David Gascoyne...

Yes you have said enough for the time being
There will be plenty of lace later on
Plenty of electric wool
And you will forget the eglantine
Growing around the edge of the green lake
And if you forget the colour of my hands
You will remember the wheels of the chair
In which the wax figure resembling you sat

Several men are standing on the pier
Unloading the sea
The device on the trolly says MOTHER'S MEAT
Which means Until the end.

- The End is Near the Beginning, pg. 109

Charles Madge...

The character of a landscape stand always in a mysterious relation to the soul of man.

And while he thought thus and lay on skins on the ground, the jaguars swam through the stream, and played round his resting-place.

The instruments had to share the couch of the travellers at night.

And gave science an insight into the analogy of natural formations, and the ruling laws of the globe in reference to its veins of water.

- Landscape I, pg. 138

Kenneth Patchen...

A beast stands at my eye.

I cook my senses in a dark fire.
The old wombs rot and the new mother
Approaches with the footsteps of a world.

Who are the people of this unscaled heaven?
What beckons?
Whose blood hallows this grim land?
What slithers along the watershed of my human sleep?

The other side of knowing...
Caress of unwaking delight...O start
A sufficient love! O gently silent forms
Of the last spaces.

- The Naked Land, pg. 175

Frank O'Hara...

The eager note on my door said 'Call me,
call when you get in!' so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

- Poem, pg. 205

Robert Duncan...

The eye opening is a mouth seeing,
an organ of sight gasping for air.
Love in the eye corrupts the seed
stirring new freaks of vision there.

How wonderful in the new sight the world will appear!

The mouth speaking is a heart breathing
The blood itself has seen something.
The world worm changing, coiled in his pit,
is the ripeness of the fruit, the organ of sight.

How wonderful in the new eye the world will appear!

- Eyesight II, pg. 211

Donald Hall...

It has happened suddenly,
by surprise, in an arbor,
or while drinking good coffee,
after speaking, or before,

that I dumbly inhabit
a density; in language,
there is nothing to stop it,
for nothing retains an edge.

Simple ignorance presents,
later, words for a function,
but it is common pretense
of speech, by a convention,

and there is nothing at all
but inner silence, nothing
to relieve on principle
now this intense thickening.

- Je suis une table, pg. 246

Bill Knott...

If you are still alive when you read this,
close you eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black.

- Goodbye, pg. 262

Robin Magowan...

An old man gets up turns
As in the quiet darkness of his own empty
Hen scuttled field
He is breaking it
Field goats family stone-cropped house
Takes steps on makes with his hands his white
Fuse of a cigarette crackle sing
In the ash of his glass dancing
His past round whiteness over which he stops
Hops twice jumps
A needle of browns
Blacks
Occasionally lizard
Flash of a whip salt bright
Falling.

- Zeimbekiko, pg. 304

John Haines...

Soundlessly, a tide at the ear
of the sleeper, a wave
is breaking on an inner shore.

Barriers crumble in the chest,
the arteries surge full and subside,
and flood again...

And behind the eyelids, a sun
struggling to rise,
throwing its light far inland

where a man neither living nor dying
shifts in his soiled flesh
and remembers...

- Awakening, pg. 309

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this in a used book shop and since I love French surrealist poetry I thought I’d have a look at an anthology collecting examples of what English speakers have done with it.

I have to say the book starts out pretty choppy with some poets just winging it completely with little positive outcome. If you’ve ever read Benjamin Peret, the Belgian surrealist, the surrealist of all surrealists, you’d see where some of these imitations came from. It doesn’t work. Oddly enough, the book also contains many translations of surrealist poetry into English, and how that qualifies as English surrealism you got me.

Still, things improved as the book went on, though I find it hard to classify a lot of the work in here as strictly surrealist, and who cares. Among the contemporary poets included are W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Patchen and James Tate. Yes, the volume is overwhelmed by men and I guess there are few female surrealists, or even non-surrealists who have written a surrealist poem that anyone has read.

But enough quibbling. I enjoyed this a lot, even some of the crappy parts were so crappy they made me laugh. And there was also some excellent stuff in there, like the short short poems of Bill Knott, and Ken Smith’s poem “Train.” (here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/train-2/)

Death by Bill Knott

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as if I am flying into myself.

[Aaron Facer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating anthology. If this sort of thing intrigues you, I'd recommend giving it a go just for Edward R. Germain's introduction.
There were parts of this that I absolutely loved, but many of the post-War poets tended to go off in directions that I didn't find that interesting (and I felt that many of the poems I didn't enjoy were just a little too self-aware to be called surrealist really...)
But I did enjoy it on the whole - there are lots of gems in here!

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in Toronto, Canada when I was 16 or 17. It's truly fascinating. I had never read poetry like it before, never even knew poetry could be surrealist, and found many of the poems brought me inspiration for my own work.

Have many, many, many favorite poems from this book. I haven't read it cover to cover, but I think I've read most of them.

[Philip Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some high points. Some of it is really awful though.
Short biographies of the poets might have been nice.
Hugh Sykes Davies, Djuna Barnes, Ken Smith probably the best that were new to me.

[Black Glove · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favourite books in the 90s. A collection of 'surrealist' poetry seemed to me mysterious and somehow sophisticated back then. - And now I'm having nostalgic feelings for something I no longer quite feel . . . But these poems (good or bad) inspired my young mind . . . That's what surrealism does. 'Go wherever you want,' it says. 'And see it what happens.' -

[Jordan West · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for the work of David Gascoyne, Hugh Sykes Davies and other actual surrealists, less so for the rest.