Customer Reviews

Black Mirror: The Selected Poems of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte

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Lecomte's poetry is primal and esoteric, mercilessly pulling the teeth of an unreal world. His 'metaphysics of absence' is not as important as the dark, incandescent images he creates while employing it. (Just a few pages and one knows he spent too much time around Daumal.) Despite his constant references to 'eternity' and that sort of thing, he is unsanctimonious and irreverent in his approach. "What a Howling Shame" paints the poet as both friend and enemy of technology and the modern world: "From the phantom of spunk/the spirit of flint/ and the spectre of steel/a magic instrument/ of incalculable shamanic and poetic value." Lecomte's world is like a shadowy funhouse mirror. The poet's exhilarating self reflection in "I'm Not Scared of Wind" is reminiscent of Rimbaud: "You bring things that would be doomed the most flat footed inertia madly alive/ You engender major phantoms and fits of the willies/You dervish clown/You kind of change/You rascal/You excessive cherub." It's surprising that Lecomte's poetry isn't better known. As Artaud writes in his introduction, Lecomte shuns 'personal' poetry and bathes in the chaotic and the visionary. Yummy stuff.

Dark surreal poetry from a poet that died in 1947, unknown.

Very visual, I highly recommend.

This is one of the top two must have poetry books of all time hands down. It rests right beside The flowers of evil.

Dark, Surreal Poetry. Written by Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, translated from French. Each page is layed out with the French translation on the left, and the English on the right. The original spacing is kept, which is critical, because the placement of the text adds so much to the flow of the reading. Lecomte was scoffed by surrealists at the time in France. He died from Tetnis, jabbing a opium needle through his dirty trowsers. His close friend gathered what works he could find, and have since come into the collected works remaining of Lecomte.

I won't doubt the heart-rending task, or major headache, in trans -lating one of the finest poets of this century. And I thank David Rattray, whose translation of Artaud are wonderfully done, for finally introducing such refined spirit as Gilbert-Lecomte to an English-speaking public. The book, as such, is fine: lovely cover-design, explicit introduction, and clever selection of poems. What else is needed? A new translation!