POEMS IN PROSE
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poems in prose
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Don't forget to browse the titles and descriptions below!
Bach-Sisley, Jean (France) The Maritimes
Burnat-Provins, Marguerite (France) Tales in twenty lines
de Gourmont, Remy (France) The Little Town
Girondo, Olivero (Argentina) Twenty Poems to be read on the Tram
Parny, Evariste (France) Malagasy Songs
Rodenbach, Georges (Belgium) The Maidens
Rodenbach, Georges (Belgium) The Tombstones
THE MARITIMES
Jean Bach-Sisley
A livre de peintre of poetry about the impact of the First World War on the poet, either figuratively or literally. Issued in 1923 as an enclosed set of cards, and illustrated by painter and fashion designer Michel Dubost.
As with the best livres des peintres, the text and images complement each other yet remain separate in a way that seems to oscillate the attention.
TWENTY POEMS TO BE READ ON THE TRAM
Oliverio Girondo
This volume is a faithful mimotype of the 1922 edition of Oliverio Girondo's Twenty Poems to be read on the Tram, in form and typography as well as the original positioning of the vivid watercolours. The cycle is a set of 20 Candide-like Ultraist postcards recounting Girondo's travels around Europe and South America in the first years of the 1920s, revelling in the splendour and squalor he encountered in equal measure. The ideals of the Ultraist movement - sparsity, vividity, two-image metaphors - are nowhere better seen than in this cycle.
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MALAGASY SONGS
Everiste Parnay
In the eighteenth century Everiste Parnay published a short collection of some loosely translated traditional Hainteny prose songs of the Merina people of Madagascar, from material he had collected while on service in Reunion. This cultural import may have been the birth of the French tradition of the poem in prose. In 1920, an artist book illustrated by Jean Emile Laboureur was commissioned by the Nouvelle Revue Francaise to celebrate the work, only five years before Ravel set three of the songs, and his exotic stylings may well have been influenced by the book's production.
THE MAIDENS
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Georges Rodenbach
​In 1895 in Paris, a pair of Art Nouveau artist friends, Joseph Rippl-Rónai and James Pitcairn-Knowles, collaborated with the publisher Bing to make two of the very first Livres de peintres.
Bing persuaded Geeorge Rodenbach (then at the height of his fame) to write a prose poem for each of them to make a pair of Christmas books. Rodenbach then produced two Symbolism mini-masterpieces.
The Maidens was created for the colour prints of Rippl-Rónai, and describes the life arcs of a group of young women as they enter society: luscious art nouveau colours in a dreamlike haze are quietly subverted by the gentle pessimism of Rodenbach's prose poem.
TOMBSTONES
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Georges Rodenbach
In 1895 in Paris, two Art Nouveau artist friends, Joseph Rippl-Rónai and James Pitcairn-Knowles, collaborated with the publisher Bing to make two of the very first Livres de peintres.
Bing persuaded Geeorge Rodenbach (then at the height of his fame) to write a prose poem for each of them to make a pair of Christmas books.
Rodenbach then produced two Symbolism mini-masterpieces: The Maidens (for the colour prints of Rippl-Rónai) describes the life arcs of a group of young women as they enter society; The Tombstones (for the black and white etchings of Pitcairn-Knowles) ruminates in Symbolist style about three decaying headstones in an abandoned suburban cemetery.
THE LITTLE TOWN
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Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont wrote a series of prose poems that were vignettes of life in his home town Coutances, which was published by Mercure in 1913. In 1922 it was made into an artist's book with woodcuts by de Gourmont's friend and fellow town-dweller Joseph Quesnel. That edition is mimotyped here in the first English translation