The Loveliest Vowel Empties - Collected Poems

Author(s): Meret Oppenheim; Kathleen Heil (Translated with commentary by)

POETRY

The Loveliest Vowel Empties presents for the first time in English the collected poems of legendary Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim, printed with facing-page originals in German and French. A key figure of the Paris art scene in the 1930s, Oppenheim moved in a circle that included André Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Elsa Schiaparelli. Writing for the Village Voice about her work, Gary Indiana noted that "the singularity of Meret Oppenheim's work is such that nothing seems dated ... the range of the work and its quirky self-assurance are striking." The publication of her collected poems coincides with a major retrospective exhibition of her artwork at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "I am in awe of Meret Oppenheim's poems, a seismic force heretofore unknown to me. Her aesthetic compatriots include Alejandra Pizarnik, Georg Trakl, Max Jacob, and Paul Celan -- artists of deep symbol, deep void. Kathleen Heil's translations are themselves works of the highest literary refinement and ingenuity. To read Oppenheim's lyric bulletins, conveyed tactfully into English, is to feel that we are plunging for the first time into the pure waters of poetry itself, impervious to fad. No dross, no affectation: instead, Oppenheim gives us strangeness, tone, translucency." --WAYNE KOESTENBAUM || "What an ingenious way of translating this superbly ingenious poet/artist! Over and over, Kathleen Heil selects a word which many would find out of the way, although I find this a true delight. To me, it feels as deeply surrealist as possible. The extraordinary Meret Oppenheim deserves no less!" --MARY ANN CAWS || "The Loveliest Vowel Empties conjures the briefest fables in an enchanted atmosphere." --Sylee Gore, Harriet || Poetry. Art. Surrealism. Women's Studies. Translation. German Poetry. French Poetry. Gender. Avant-Garde.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781954218086
  • : World Poetry Books
  • : 15 February 2023
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Meret Oppenheim; Kathleen Heil (Translated with commentary by)
  • : Paperback
  • : 128