Pppppp: Kurt Schwitters Poems, Performance, Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics - Softcover

Schwitters, Kurt; Rothenberg, Jerome

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566392640 ISBN 13: 9781566392648

Publisher: Temple Univ Pr, 1994

Synopsis

Kurt Schwitters, one of the great visual artists of the 20th century, was also one of the major poets and theorists of Modernism. This collection brings the vast range of his writings to an English audience. This book was the winner of the 1994 PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Translation.

About this title

From the Publisher

The first book of Kurt Schwitters' writings translated into English

Pen Center USA West Literary Award for Translation

From the Inside Flap

"My aim is the total Merz art work, which combines all genres into an artistic unity. First I married off single genres. I pasted words and sentences together in poems in such a way that their rhythmic composition created a kind of drawing. The other way around, I pasted together pictures and drawings containing sentences that demand to be read.... I did this in order to erase the boundaries between the arts."
—Kurt Schwitters

"Alone, the artist's work would remain equally strong and radical, but I think it is fortunate that his work fell into the hands of Joris and Rothenberg....The[y] provide a clear historical background while establishing the importance and current validity of Schwitters' written work."
—American Book Review

"Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, themselves important poets, have given us a wonderfully supple idiomatic translation of Schwitters' major poems, fictions, and plays. Form the radical language experiments of the early twenties—'An Anna Blume' and the 'Ur Sonata' are cited in virtually every book-length study of Dada and European avant-garde—to the later plays and the Merz manifestos, Rothenberg and Joris have done wonders in conveying the tone and pace of Schwitters' poetic and performance pieces. Anyone who cares about the Modernist avant-garde will want to own this book, and its critical apparatus makes it ideal for classroom use."
—Marjorie Perloff

Edition details

• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1566392640
• ISBN 13: 9781566392648
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Joris Pierre