When Guillaume Apollinaire died in 1918 at the age of thirty-eight, as the result of a war wound, he was already known as one of the most original and important poets of his time. He had led the migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse; he had helped formulate the principles of Cubism, having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word "Surrealist"; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avant-garde. This bilingual, illustrated edition of The Selected Writings of Apollinaire, the only representative collection in English translation, begins with a comprehensive critical Introduction by the translator, Roger Shattuck. The next section is devoted to poetry. Included here are almost half of Apollinaire's two best-known volumes, Alcools and Calligrammes, as well as a selection from five other books, and the long love poem La Chanson du Mal-Aime in its entirety. The prose section leads off with "L'Esprit Nouveau et les Poetes", a seminal discussion of modern poetry that anticipates such movements as Dada and Futurism. This is followed by Apollinaire's almost unobtainable "Introduction to Baudelaire and Oneirocriticism", an early experimental work composed in a style prophetic of Surrealist automatic writing. There are, in addition, two stories, a passage from Anecdotiques, and a section from the novel Le Poete Assassine.

About the Author
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) worked as a bank employee in Paris, founded the review journal Le festin d'esope, and served as art critic for Le petit bleu. He served in the French army infantry beginning in 1914, until he was wounded in 1916. He passed away in 1918. Roger Shattuck, author of Forbidden Knowledge and Proust's Way, has won the National Book Award. He lives in Vermont.

Reviews
"The leader of the Parisian avant-garde, the champion of cubism, simultaneism, futurism and every other -ism, the poet who embraced the new technologies and exploded poetic form and figure..." -- Stephen Romer - The Guardian
"The young and very ferocious are going to 'understand' Guillaume Apollinaire." -- Ezra Pound



Book Information
ISBN 9780811200035
Author Guillaume Apollinaire
Format Paperback
Page Count 284
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 302g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 132mm * 20mm