Customer Reviews

Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life

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Desnos is my favorite poet. Even though I can find relatively little of his poetry translated into English, he speaks to me over the spaces of time and ocean. Thanks to this book, I know something of his life and death; he is more amazing than I ever dreamed. I discovered him in grad school years ago, and he has always been the benchmark for me as a poet. I occasionally might stray into the great poet lands of Eastern Europe or South American, but I ALWAYS come home to Paris where Desnos will be leaning against a stone wall, cigarette hanging out of his mouth ready to teach me something new. I'm convinced that he would have loved coming home to Paris in a Czech cocktail shaker. I will be on the lookout for more books by Conley.

Conley's beautifully written and carefully researched intellectual biography of Desnos provides a radically new approach not just to this singular poet but also the the French surrealist movement which he helped to found. The most moving chapter in this emotionally rich book reviews Desnos's last poem, thought to have been written while the poet was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp. Conley provides a startlingly new history of this poem's composition. Other chapters introduce Desnos's extravagant loves in relation to his poetry, describe his spontaneous lapses into automatic poetry, and chronicle his subversive contributions to the French Resistance both as a poet and as a fighter. This book provides great insight into the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe even as it details the works of one of this period's singular figures.

the type used in this intriguing, much awaited book is so small that reading it is truly discouraging. why, why why???? ruin such an effort!