Pierre Reverdy (13 September 1889 - 17 June 1960) was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.
Reverdy arrived in Paris in October 1910. It was there, at the famous Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre that he met Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Louis Aragon, André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara.
For sixteen years, Reverdy lived for his writing. His companions were Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and many others. These were the years in which surrealism 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." Bloodaxe Books: Title Page > Pierre Reverdy: Selected Poems
In 1917, together with Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, Reverdy founded the influential journal Nord-Sud ("North-South") which contained many Dadaist 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, he left Paris, converted to Catholicism and went to live in Solesmes, 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.
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, C?ur 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'?uvre, 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).
1953 Cercle doré, (Mourlot).
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.)
A glass of papaya juiceand back to work. My heart is in mypocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.--Frank O'Hara, "A Step Away From Them" A Step Away From Them - A poem by Frank O'Hara - American Poems
"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 Bloodaxe Books: Title Page > Pierre Reverdy: Selected Poems
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, John Ashbery, Mary Ann Caws, Patricia Ann Terry and, more recently, Ron Padgett.
Pierre Reverdy: Selected Poems - translated by Kenneth Rexroth (New Directions, 1969)
Roof Slates and Other Poems of Pierre Reverdy - translated by Caws & 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 (Black Square Editions, 2007)
Haunted House (long prose poem) - translated by John Ashbery (Black Square Editions, 2007)