Earthlight

Book translation winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize

Best known in the United States as the mastermind of the Surrealist movement and as the author of the dream-logic fiction Nadja, André Breton has always enjoyed in Europe the additional reputation of being a brilliant poet. Bill Zavatsky's and Zack Rogow's excellent translation of Breton's Earthlight (Clair de terre) introduces the English-language audience to the delights—and complexities—of Breton's poetry.

Written to friends and fellow Surrealists such as Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Robert Desnos, Francis Picabia, Pierre Reverdy, and Max Ernst, the poems in this collection date from 1919-1936, spanning Breton's involvement with Dadaism and his founding and development of Surrealism. The range of poetic forms, from the early collage compositions to the “Five Dreams” of Earthlight and the incantatory, feverish love poem “Free Union,” reveals Breton's compositional methods and styles, delivering the “world in a kiss.”