Pierre Reverdy

Book excerpt: The great Pierre Reverdy, comrade to Picasso and Braque, peer and contemporary of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, is among the most mysteriously satisfying of twentieth-century poets, his poems an uncanny mixture of the simple and the sublime. Reverdy’s poetry has exerted a special attraction on American poets, from Kenneth Rexroth to John Ashbery, and this new selection, featuring the work of fourteen distinguished translators, most of it appearing here for the first time, documents that ongoing relationship while offering readers the essential work of an extraordinary writer. Translated from the French by: John Ashbery Dan Bellm Mary Ann Caws Lydia Davis Marilyn Hacker Richard Howard Geoffrey O’Brien Frank O’Hara Ron Padgett Mark Polizzotti Kenneth Rexroth Richard Sieburth Patricia Terry Rosanna Warren