Pierre Reverdy was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 poet associated with surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

.

Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne

Narbonne

Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...

 and grew up near the Montagne Noire

Montagne Noire

* Not to be confused with the Montagnes Noires in Brittany.The Montagne Noire is a mountain range in central southern France. It is located at the southwestern end of the Massif Central in the border area of the Tarn, Hérault and Aude departments...

 in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

 and Narbonne.

Reverdy arrived in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in October 1910. It was there, at the famous Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre

Montmartre

Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...

 that he met Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

, Max Jacob

Max Jacob

Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...

, Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...

, André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

, Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...

 and Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...

.

For sixteen years, Reverdy lived for his writing. His companions were Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

, Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

 and many others. These were the years in which surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 took flight and Reverdy partly inspired it. In the first Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton hailed Reverdy as "the greatest poet of the time," and Louis Aragon said that for Breton, Soupault, Éluard and himself, Reverdy was "our immediate elder, the exemplary poet."

In 1917, together with Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, Reverdy founded the influential journal Nord-Sud ("North-South") which contained many Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

ist and then surrealist contributions. It continued until 1918.

Reclusive by nature, Reverdy began to distance himself from these circles; in 1926, at the age of 37, and following a love affair with Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

, he left Paris, converted to Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

 and went to live in Solesmes

Solesmes

Solesmes is a commune in the Sarthe department in the region of Pays-de-la-Loire in northwestern France.It is located near Sablé.The commune is almost entirely agricultural, but is especially noted as the site of the Benedictine St. Peter's Abbey, originally founded in 1010 and re-established by...

, home of the great St. Peter's Abbey. He stayed there until his death in 1960. During this time he wrote several collections including Sources du vent, Ferraille and Le Chant des morts. Besides Reverdy published two volumes containing critical matter (reflections on literature mingled with aphorisms) entitled En vrac and Le livre de mon bord.

Works

• 1915 Poèmes en prose (Paris, Imprimerie Birault).
• 1916 La lucarne ovale (Birault).
• 1916 Quelques poèmes (Birault).
• 1917 Le voleur de Talan, roman (Avignon, Imprimerie Rullière).
• 1918 Les ardoises du toit, illustrated by Georges Braque
  Georges Braque
  Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
  
   (Birault).
• 1918 Les jockeys camouflés et période hors-texte, (Imprimerie F. Bernouard).
• 1919 La guitare endormie, (Imprimerie Birault).
• 1919 Self defence. Critique-Esthétique. (Birault).
• 1921 Étoiles peintes, (Paris, Sagittaire).
• 1921 Cœur de chêne, (Éditions de la Galerie Simon).
• 1922 Cravates de chanvre, (Éditions Nord-Sud).
• 1924 Pablo Picasso et son œuvre, in Pablo Picasso(Gallimard).
• 1924 Les épaves du ciel (Gallimard).
• 1925 Écumes de la mer, (Gallimard).
• 1925 Grande nature (Paris, Les Cahiers libres).
• 1926 La peau de l'homme, (Gallimard).
• 1927 Le gant de crin (Plon).
• 1928 La balle au bond, (Marseille, Les Cahiers du Sud).
• 1929 Sources du vent, (Maurice Sachs éditeur).
• 1929 Flaques de verre (Gallimard).
• 1930 Pierres blanches, (Carcassonne, Éditions d'art Jordy).
• 1930 Risques et périls, contes 1915-1928 (Gallimard).
• 1937 Ferraille (Brussels).
• 1937 Preface for Déluges by Georges Herment (José Corti).
• 1940 Plein verre (Nice).
• 1945 Plupart du temps, poèmes 1915-1922, which collects Poèmes en prose, Quelques poèmes, La lucarne ovale, Les ardoises du toit, Les jockeys camouflés, La guitare endormie, Étoiles peintes, Cœur de chêne et Cravates de chanvre (Gallimard, reedited in 1969 in the « Poésie » series).
• 1945 Preface for Souspente by Antoine Tudal (Paris, Éditions R.J. Godet).
• 1946 Visages, (Paris, Éditions du Chêne).
• 1948 Le chant des morts, (Tériade éditeur).
• 1948 Le livre de mon bord, notes 1930-1936 (Mercure de France).
• 1949 Tombeau vivant, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, in Tombeau de Jean-Sébastien Galanis (Paris, imprimé par Daragnès).
• 1949 Main d'œuvre, poèmes 1913-1949, which collects: Grande nature, La balle au bond, Sources du vent, Pierres blanches, Ferraille, Plein verre and Le chant des morts and adds Cale sèche and Bois vert, (Mercure de France).
• 1950 Une aventure méthodique, (Paris, Mourlot
  Mourlot
  The Mourlot family has been closely associated with the arts since 1852. The family ran Mourlot Studios, also known as Imprimerie Mourlot, Ateliers Mourlot and Mourlot Freres.-Family members:*Francois Mourlot , lithographic printer....
  
  ).
• 1953 Cercle doré, (Mourlot
  Mourlot
  The Mourlot family has been closely associated with the arts since 1852. The family ran Mourlot Studios, also known as Imprimerie Mourlot, Ateliers Mourlot and Mourlot Freres.-Family members:*Francois Mourlot , lithographic printer....
  
  ).
• 1955 Au soleil du plafond, (Tériade éditeur).
• 1956 En vrac (Monaco, Éditions du Rocher).
• 1959 La liberté des mers, (Éditions Maeght).
• 1962 À René Char, (Alès, P. A. Benoît, poème épistolaire tiré à 4 ex.)
• 1966 Sable mouvant, (Paris, L. Broder éditeur).

Praise

A glass of papaya juice

and back to work. My heart is in my

pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

--Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

, "A Step Away From Them"

"Reverdy's strange landscapes, which combine an intense inwardness with a proliferation of sensual data, bear in them the signs of a continual search for an impossible totality. Almost mystical in their effect, his poems are nevertheless anchored in the minutiae of the everyday world; in their quiet, at times monotone music, the poet seems to evaporate, to vanish into the haunted country he has created. The result is at once beautiful and disquieting as if Reverdy had emptied the space of the poem in order to let the reader inhabit it" --Paul Auster

Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...

Translations in English

English translations of Reverdy's work have appeared in a smattering of volumes over the years, most of which are now out of print but still available used. Beginning in the early sixties, several writers have produced translations of Reverdy's work, notably Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...

, John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, Mary Ann Caws

Mary Ann Caws

Mary Ann Caws is an American author, art historian and literary critic.She is currently a Distinguished Professor of English, French and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature,...

, Patricia Ann Terry and, more recently, Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...

.

• Pierre Reverdy: Selected Poems - translated by Kenneth Rexroth
  Kenneth Rexroth
  Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
  
   (New Directions, 1969)
• Roof Slates and Other Poems of Pierre Reverdy - translated by Caws
  Mary Ann Caws
  Mary Ann Caws is an American author, art historian and literary critic.She is currently a Distinguished Professor of English, French and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature,...
  
   & Terry (Northeastern Univ. Press, 1981)
• Selected Poems by Pierre Reverdy - edited by Timothy Bent and Germaine Brée (Wake Forest Univ. Press / Bloodaxe (UK), 1991)
• Prose Poems - translated by Ron Padgett
  Ron Padgett
  Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
  
   (Black Square Editions, 2007)
• Haunted House (long prose poem) - translated by John Ashbery
  John Ashbery
  John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
  
  (Black Square Editions, 2007)

External links

• The Cubist Poetry of Pierre Reverdy - essay by Kenneth Rexroth (first published as the Introduction to Selected Poems)
• Pierre Reverdy translated by Tom Hibbard - eight poems online at Milk Magazine
• Excerpt from Three Letters to Jean Rousselot (1951) - published in Jubilat 3
• Bookworm Interview with John Ashbery and Ron Padgett on the works of Pierre Reverdy (June, 2007)
• Pierre Reverdy: Seven Poems at FudoMouth.net - translated by Kenneth Rexroth (from Selected Poems)