Reviews for Poems of Andre Breton: A Bilingual Anthology

The average rating for Poems of Andre Breton: A Bilingual Anthology based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-02 00:00:00 Nancy Keidel Woman of mine with the back of a bird in vertical flight With a quicksilver back A back of light With a nape of rolled stone and moist chalk And the drop of a glass just drained Woman of mine with nacelle hips With chandelier and arrow-feather hips Like scapes of white peacock plumes Of imperceptible sway Woman of mine with buttocks of sandstone and amianthus Woman of mine with swan's-back buttocks Woman of mine with springtime buttocks With the gladiolus sex Woman of mine with the placer and platypus sex Woman of mine with the sex of seaweed and oldtime sweets Woman of mine with the mirror-like sex Woman of mine with eyes full of tears With violet-panoplied and magnetic-needle eyes Woman of mine with savannah eyes Woman of mine with eyes of water to be drunk in prison Woman of mine with eyes of wood always under the axe With water-level eyes the level of air earth and fire - I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair has no wings, it is not necessarily found at a cleared table upon a terrace, in the evening by the seaside. It is despair and it is not the return of a quantity of little facts like seeds leaving one furrow for another at nightfall. It is not moss upon a stone or a drinking glass. It is a boat riddled with snow, if you please, like birds falling, and their blood has not the slightest thickness. I know despair in its broad outlines. A very small form, fringed by jewels of hair. It is despair. A necklace of pearls for which a clasp can never be found and whose existence does not hold even by a thread, that is despair.'As for the rest, let's not speak of it. We haven't finished despairing if we begin. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o'clock, I despair of the fan around midnight, I despair of the condemned man's last cigarette. I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair has no heart, the hand always remains in despair out of breath, in despair whose death we are never told about by mirrors. I live off this despair which so enchants me. I love that blue fly streaking in the sky at the hour when the stars hum their song. I know in its broad outlines despair with its long, slim breaches, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I rise every day like everyone and I stretch out my arms on a flowered wall paper, I remember nothing and it is always with despair that I discover the lovely uprooted trees of the night. The air of the room is lovely like drumsticks. It is time weather. I know despair in its broad outlines. It is like the curtain wind giving me a helping hand. Can you imagine such despair: Fire, fire! Ah they are still going to come . . . Help! There they are falling down the stairs . . . And the newspaper advertisements, and the illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, go on with you, you old sandpile! In its broad outlines despair has no importance. It is a drudgery of trees that is going to make a forest again, a drudgery of stars that is going to make one less day again, a drudgery of days fewer which will again make up my life. - Patient and curved the lovely shadow walks round the paving stones The Venetian windows open and close upon the square Where beasts move freely fires trailing Wet streetlamps rustle in a frame of swarming blue eyes That cover the landscape upstream from the town This morning prow of the sun how you steep yourself in the superb songs sighed in a traditional mode behind the curtains by the naked women keeping watch While the giant arum lilies turn about their waist The bloody mannequin hopping on all three feet in the attic He's coming they say arching their necks where the bounce of braids sets free faintly pink glaciers That split under the weight of a ray of light falling from the torn-off blinds He's coming it's the glass-toothed wolf Who eats up time in little round boxes Who blows the overpungent fragrances of herbs Who smokes little guide fires in the turnips at evening The columns of the great apartments of marble and vetiver cry out They cry caught in those to-and-fro motions which until then enlivened only certain colossal castings in factories The motionless women on turntables will see There is daylight on the left but night has completely fallen on the right There are branches still full of birds that darken the gap in the casement window as they speed by White birds laying black eggs Where are those birds replaced now by stars edged with twin strands of pearls - There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the very first time - The benches of the outer boulevards bend down in time under the embrace of vines that light up softly in a spangle of beautiful eyes and lips. While they appear vacant to us, around them those ardent flowers continue to flutter and infuse each other. They are to translate in concrete terms the adage of mythographers according to which the gravitational pull of heavenly bodies is allegedly a characteristic of space and carnal desire the daughter of that characteristic but which altogether forgets to specify that it is up to the daughter, for the ball, to adorn the mother. A single breath is sufficient to set free those myriads of egrets bearing achenes. Between their upward and their downward flight along the endless curve of desire all the signs encompassed by the celestial score are set down in harmony. .

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-20 00:00:00 Desprez Frederic When the windows like the jackal's eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled forebodings descend the buildings' steps. The best thing is to flee from the great feather cylinders when the hunters limp into the sodden lands. If you take a bath in the watery patterns of the streets, childhood returns to the country like a greyhound. Man seeks his prey in the breezes and the fruits are drying on the screens of pink paper, in the shadow of the names overgrown by forgetfulness. Joys and sorrows spread in the town. Gold and eucalyptus, similarly scented, attack dreams. Among the bridles and the dark edelweiss subterranean forms are resting like perfumers' corks. * I caress all that you were In all that must still be you * In your voice trills of lost birds give themselves a lift