In occasione del cinquantenario dalla morte di Marchel Duchamp la Fondazione Echaurren Salaris traduce per il pubblico italiano questa conversazione su Marcel Duchamp, tenuta nel 2018 presso la City University of New York, Mary Ann Caws prende spunto dalle impressioni ricevute un anno prima visitando la mostra di Pablo Echaurren 'Du champ magnétique' alla Scala Contarini del Bovolo, a Venezia, in cui il pubblico era invitato a salire e scendere lungo una vertiginosa scala a chiocciola, in omaggio all'opera che ha reso celebre nel mondo l'autore del Nu descendant un escalier.

A comprehensive bi-lingual sampling of Pierre Reverdy's (1889-1960) poetry. Ably edited and translated, with commentary and notes by Mary Ann Caws and additional translations by Patricia Terry, this edition provides a more in depth look than many of the volumes that currently provide small samplings of his poetry and writings. Includes all of Reverdy's Les Ardoises du toit (The Roof Slates), representing many of his finest poems in verse and follows with his wonderful prose poems presented chronologically.

Pierre Reverdy, who was close to Picasso and Braque and was enormously admired by the surrealists, is one the greatest of modern French poets and one of the most elusive. His work is at once impersonal and intimate, crystalline and opaque, simplicity itself and mysterious as can be. Paul Auster has described his poems as combining an “intense inwardness with a proliferation of sensual data.... The poet seems to evaporate, to vanish into the haunted country he has created...as if Reverdy had emptied the space of the poem in order to let the reader inhabit it.”

Auster is only one of many American writers to be drawn to the mystery of Reverdy’s unsettling world. There is also Frank O’Hara, who carried Reverdy’s poems in his pocket and wrote (in lines that don’t just mention but echo Reverdy):

and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible
René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn’t it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don’t believe it

And John Ashbery has shown himself to be no less devoted than his friend O’Hara to Reverdy, whose poems he has translated throughout his career.

The strength of this new selection of Reverdy’s poetry, which includes both translations that have been specially commissioned for this volume along with a range of outstanding earlier ones, is not only to provide a sampling of Reverdy’s finest work in all its variety but also to document the appeal it has had for so many of America’s best writers and translators. Reverdy is represented by work early and late, from the pioneering Prose Poems of 1915 and Roof Slates of 1918 to his violently conceived and brutally worded, war-haunted poems of 1946 to 1948, entitled The Song of the Dead (originally illustrated by Picasso) to his final Freedom of the Seas of 1960. The twelve distinguished translators involved are John Ashbery, Dan Bellm, Mary Ann Caws, Lydia Davis, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Howard, Geoffrey O’Brien, Ron Padgett, Mark Polizzotti, Kenneth Rexroth, Richard Sieburth, and Rosanna Warren.

Matisse, Picasso, Hockney—they may not have been from the same period, but they all painted still lifes of food. And they are not alone. Andy Warhol painted soup cans, Claes Oldenburg sculpted an ice cream cone on the top of a building in Cologne, Jack Kerouac’s Sal ate apple pie across the country, and Truman Capote served chicken hash at the Black and White Ball. Food has always played a role in art, but how well and what did the artists themselves eat? Exploring a panoply of artworks of food, cooking, and eating from Europe and the Americas, The Modern Art Cookbook opens a window into the lives of artists, writers, and poets in the kitchen and the studio throughout the twentieth century and beyond.

This singular book illustrates how to edit a piece of prose and enhance its clarity of thought and felicity of style. The authors first present ten principles of effective composition, and then scrutinize three extended paragraphs, suggesting with remarkable specificity how to improve them. The volume also offers challenging practice questions, as well as two finished essays, one serious and one humorous, that demonstrate how attention to sound mechanics need not result in mechanical writing. Steven M. Cahn and Victor L. Cahn help readers deploy a host of corrective strategies, such as avoiding jargon, bombast, and redundancy; varying sentence structure; paring the use of adjectives and adverbs; properly deploying phrases and clauses; and refining an argument. Here is a book for all who seek to increase their facility in written communication.

Rene Char (1907-1988) was one of France's most respected 20th century poets. Part of the Surrealist group in the late 1920's-1930's, he gradually drifted away from the group. During WWII he joined the resistance and wrote his forceful prose poems describing what he saw and experienced. This large, bilingual anthology, includes all of his well known books Feuillets d'Hypnos and Fureur et Mystere as well as a sampling of other poems and prose poems. Insightful essays are provided by Sandra Bermann, Mary Ann Caws, and Nancy Kline.

Un'introduzione perfetta alla più longeva corrente d'avanguardia del XX secolo. Il volume presenta tutti gli artisti più importanti del movimento, da Salvador Dalí a Max Ernst e René Magritte. Una panoramica completa del surrealismo corredata da un saggio approfondito e da numerose tavole a colori. L'opera è curata da Mary Ann Caws, esperta di fama internazionale, docente e interprete di opere surrealiste. Il libro illustra la durevole influenza che il surrealismo ha esercitato sull'arte, il cinema e la fotografia contemporanei.

This anthology collects approximately ninety poems from 19th century French women writers. Presented under the heading 'Romanticism: Revolutions and Interiority' are poems by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Amable Tastu, Delphine Gay de Girardin, Élisa Mercœur, and Louise Colet. Under the heading 'Recitation and Rebellion: Parnassianism, War, and the Fall of Empire' come poems from Louise Ackermann, Malvina Blanchecotte, Louise Michel, Louisa Siefert, and Nina de Villard. Finally, poems by Judith Gautier, Marie Krysinska, Gérard d'Houville, and Renée Vivien are presented under the heading 'The Promises of Symbolism.' The poems are presented in the original French and in English translation on facing pages. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robert Desnos (1900-1945) was one of the primary poets and writers of the Surrealist movement of 1924-1930. He wrote, and collaboratively wrote, many influential and celebrated books. Besides poetry, Desnos wrote on a wide range of subjects from film texts and criticism to novels. During WWII he became a poet of the resistance, but was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to several notorious concentration camps for the duration of the war. He died as a result of his internment. This is the most comprehensive anthology of the writings of Robert Desnos ever assembled and translated into the English language. The extensive poetry section is bilingual. The English translations are by the most renowned translators of Robert Desnos.

Capital of Pain, is considered one of the key texts of surrealism. This is the first new translation into English of this work in over 30 years and the only edition available in the English language. This edition presents the text in its entirety in a bilingual format and includes an extensive essay on Eluard's works by Mary Ann Caws. This book has had a lasting effect on poets and readers since it exploded unto the literary scene in 1926 and has never been out of print in Europe since.

Andre Breton (1896-1966) was the founder of Surrealism and a major leader of the avante-garde movement in France following World War I. This exceptional volume brings together the most comprehensive selection of poems by Breton available in the English language. Here, in a bilingual French-English format are 73 poems representing all styles and stages of the writer's career.

The only English language source for Tzara's majestic and powerful epic poem 'Approximate Man.' This completley revised title (originally published in 1973) also contains an extensive collection of other writings by Tzara not often found in the English language. Translator and editor Mary Ann Caws also provides an essay new to this edition that helps set the context of 'Approximate Man.' A critical introduction and extensive notes on text variants are included.

Traces the life and accomplishments of the twentieth century novelist, noting his never-ending observation of the world that influenced his fictional characterizations, artistic works, and daily routines within his elite social circle. Reprint.

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In 1951 Robert Motherwell published a collection of writings called The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. Conceived as a sequel to that volume, Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology does for Surrealism what Motherwell's book did for Dadaism. The concept and contents were discussed with Robert Motherwell and met with his enthusiastic approval.The essays, manifestos, poems, and texts in this anthology offer a composite picture of the Surrealists -- their convictions, styles, and spirit -- from the movement's beginnings in France just after World War I to its second flowering in America after World War II. The book includes writers and artists from Belgium, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Guyana, Italy, Martinique, Mauritius, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Senegal, Uruguay, and the United States. Caws's main criterion for inclusion was that the works be the best and most representative of the different forms of Surrealism. Among others, the artists and writers include Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, Max Ernst, Mina Loy, Francis Picabia, and Tristan Tzara.

Contains translated prose pieces by one of the most influential figures in 19th-century France on such topics as life, fashion, language, aesthetics, and the performing arts.

The Selected Poems of René Char is a comprehensive, bilingual overview reflecting the poet’s wide stylistic and philosophical range, from aphorism to dramatic lyricism. In making their selections, the editors have chosen the voices of seventeen poets and translators (Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Cid Corman, Eugène Jolas, W.S. Merwin, William Carlos Williams, and James Wright, to name a few), in homage to a writer long held in highest esteem by the literary avant-garde.