From the Hidden Storehouse: Selected Poems

by Benjamin Péret, Keith Hollaman (Translator), Charles Simic (Introduction)

Luis Bunuel called Péret “the quintessential surrealist poet.” Benjamin Peret is a poet like no other. One of the original group of Surrealists, he seceded from Dada in 1924 and remained faithful to Surrealist principles until his death in 1959. His irreverence and incandescent imagination remain fresh and funny, and they are perfectly captured in this inspired, idomatic translation.

Genres: Poetry, France

149 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1981

About the author

Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism.
Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, France on 4 July 1899. He, as a child, acquired little education due to his dislike of school and he instead attended the Local Art School from 1912. He too, however, resigned soon after in 1913 due to his sheer lack of study and willingness to do so. Afterwards he spent a short period of time in a School of Industrial Design before enlisting in the French army's Cuirassiers during the First World War to avoid being jailed for defacing a local statue with paint. He saw action in the Balkans before being deployed to Salonica, Greece.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like most of the Field Translation Series, this book is -no exaggeration- a gift to mankind. Stunning and wild and so funny. Makes me want to jump out the window.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute nonsense. I wonder if I should even bother typing this out?

“A bear was eating breasts
The sofa eaten up the bear spit out breasts
From out of the breasts emerged a cow
The cow pissed cats
The cats made a ladder
The cow climbed the ladder
The cats climbed the ladder
At the top the ladder broke
The ladder became a fat mailman …”

And on and on. You get the idea.

According to the apologist intro by Charles Simic, who is trying awfully hard to find something redeeming to draw from this mess, Péret surprises and disorients the reader with a comic explosion of metaphor and “anti-poetic” sense of the absurd.

That’s just an academic way of saying he writes a lot of goofy bullshit.

If you want to spend several hours reading gibberish about animals, bodily fluids, and women’s breasts (they appear constantly in this collection), then be my guest.

[Glyven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll bet you're tempted to fall back on one of your favorite words, "random," to describe Péret's poetry. But note how the recurrence of certain motifs (derby hats, June bugs, Chinese lanterns, catastrophes befalling clergymen and police officers) infuses a whiff of continuity, even if the poet's outlandish similes-within-similes lure you down more rabbit holes than Hank Kimball on a self-qualifying rampage, cha cha cha.

[Ashia Like Aша · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually I consider surrealist novels to, ironically, sacrifice tone for form, but Péret characteristically ties both together with seeming ease. There's a warmth and sentience to the odd, animate, and unbridled frame that Péret uses to tie each of these pieces together - and the forms of something all-too-familiar seem to surge underneath the pages.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. Am. Love. Ing. This.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Surrealist poetry.

[Krish Sanghvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these poems were very difficult to understand, but that’s probably the point of Dadaist-surrealist literature. Yet, I enjoyed the ones I understood, and I enjoyed the spectacular language used in all poems. I know I won’t read surrealist poems again, but it was still a great book which allows you to explore the less visited side of poetry and makes you realise that not all poems are the same and style and originality can make poems very enjoyable to read.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best surrealist poetry I’ve ever read