Surrealism Against The Current: Tracts and Declarations
Bringing together many Surrealist texts that have never previously been available in English, this collection is an essential guide for anyone who wishes to understand the Surrealist movement. Including a wealth of original works, it traces its development in the words of the Surrealists themselves, offering a definitive expression of Surrealism as a collective movement. It shows the extent of Surrealist positions and interests and shows how, having become a major cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century, the issues it has raised remain central to current debates.
Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora
Surrealism as a movement has always resisted the efforts of critics to confine it to any static definition--surrealists themselves have always preferred to speak of it in terms of dynamics, dialectics, goals, and struggles. Accordingly, surrealist groups have always encouraged and exemplified the widest diversity--from its start the movement was emphatically opposed to racism and colonialism, and it embraced thinkers from every race and nation. Yet in the vast critical literature on surrealism, all but a few black poets have been invisible. Academic histories and anthologies typically, but very wrongly
Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly 300 texts by 96 women from 28 countries. She opens the book with a summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the origins of the movement. Though surrealism has often been viewed as a male-dominated movement, women (many more than the few well-known artists such as Lenora Carrington and Frida Kahlo) have been integral to its development.
Language Poetry, Language Writing, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing—no matter the moniker, the impact of the movement and its particular pedigree of theory-conscious poetics, postmodern aesthetics, and non-academic stance cannot be denied. In this timely volume, David Arnold not only provides a means for coming to terms with this influential mode of writing and its ongoing crisis of representation but also reassesses the complex relationship between language poetry and surrealism, through discussion of some of late twentieth-century’s most innovative poets, including Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer, and Barrett Watten.
