Arsenal: Surrealist Perversion

by Franklin Rosemont

With more than 60 international contributors, this collection resembles a 'whole earth catalog' to the unusual and bizarre. The surrealist movement as it began in art has found momentum in poetry and text. Many illustrations are included here as well.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Franklin Rosemont was co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist. His mother, Sally, was a jazz musician.
He edited & wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, & edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot & Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With his wife, Penelope Rosemont, & Paul Garon he edited The Forecast is Hot!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst & Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) & of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biogaphy of Joe Hill.
He is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, & Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, published by Black Swan Press in Chicago in 2003.
Rosemont and his wife urrently live in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, managing the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the world's oldest, continuously existing socialist publishing house.

Reviews

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic collection of surrealist poetry, much of it flowing with freewheeling sexuality.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything I love about Chicago and surrealism.