Surrealist Women: An International Anthology

Surrealist Revolution

by Penelope Rosemont (Editor), Lise Deharme, Leonora Carrington

Beginning in Paris in the 1920s, women poets, essayists, painters, and artists in other media have actively collaborated in defining and refining surrealism's basic project—achieving a higher, open, and dynamic consciousness, from which no aspect of the real or the imaginary is rejected. Indeed, few artistic or social movements can boast as many women forebears, founders, and participants—perhaps only feminism itself. Yet outside the movement, women's contributions to surrealism have been largely ignored or simply unknown. This anthology, the first of its kind in any language, displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Letting surrealist women speak for themselves, Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the movement's origins. She then organizes the book into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions that describe trends in the movement during each period. Rosemont also prefaces each surrealist's work with a brief biographical statement.

Genres: Art, Poetry, Nonfiction, Art History, Surreal, Essays, History

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massively comprehensive anthology of oft-overlooked female surrealist writers (prior favorites included here: Leornora Carrington and Ithel Colquhoun), not just in the interwar Paris of surrealism's conception but straight up through the present and virtually across the globe. In this sense, it's quite a good history of the development and spread of the surrealist movement and influence, from Martinique to Egypt (much historical and biographical information here, too), but sometimes it also seems like some depth has been sacrificed to encyclopedic reach. And, as a matter of taste, I'm much more excited by surrealist prose fiction than a lot of the automatic writing exercises and poetry (editor Penelope Rosemont's personal area of surrealist contribution-- besides this edifice, of course), that turn up here. Or even essay excerpts about (rather than of) surrealist topics. Still, an excellent reference book that I will certainly pull off the shelf regularly.

I find that a lot of this can run together a bit (nature of the scope and density of the material perhaps) so I've really got to take notes:

Renee Gauthier :: though with only a single published dream account from 1924, I want to remember her description of the "gods' hunt", a bit of bizarre lore impressed upon her by her mother in childhood:

My mother, who often frightened me, saying she'd heard the noise of the gods' hunt, was never able to explain exactly what it was. She'd say it was those enormous, deafening noises of men and monstrous beasts that pas over the sky on a certain date of the year. When you hear them, you must lie on the ground on your stomach and plug your ears.

Claude Cahun :: Born Lucy Schwob, niece of Belgian symbolist Marcel Schwob. Though an excellent writer of vignettes about classic surrealist topics like masks ("with horror you see that the flesh and the mask have become inseparable") and the dangers of objects, she is apparently best known as an early surrealist photographer, which was well backed up by a little googling. A self portrait, and a constructed scene from here:

[image error]

Comparable to humans, other animals seem quite reasonable.

Lise Deharme :: While this collection only contains a couple all-too-brief poems, Deharme was apparently a prolific writer with a number of novels to her name. I'm not sure that any have been translated from French, but if anyone has any information, I'd be thrilled. Later, also included, a quick story-sketch about Gertrude Stein.

Interlude: a sort of surrealist 20 questions, wherein one player envisions an object while another attempts to guess it or discern its properties with questions like: "Is it diurnal or nocturnal?" "Is it favorable toward love?" "What crime does it correspond to?" and "On what spot of the nude body of a women would you place it?". Played this on the train with Maya with excellent results.

Gisele Prassinos :: Greek composer of splendid automatic verse and prose, legendarily let into the surrealist group at age 14, in 1934. This volume includes two quick stories that tend towards the more haphazard end of surrealism, but leave me curious to find more at least.

When I woke up, there were no more children. But on the carpet lay a bandaged male foot, some moldy hair, and some nuts. Children are afraid of idols.

Sheila Legge :: as the "Surrealist Phantom" at the 1936 Surrealist exposition in London.

...out there in the desert, that tall ship built entirely of most costly marble...

Leonora Carrington :: My favorite surrealist writer ever, so I was delighted to find a short previously untranslated tale here, "The Sand Camel". One of her eerie fables of dubious moral import, this one describes two children, A and B, who live with their grandmother and build dangerous animals with advice from a crow magician. Vague, tangential resonance with the Third Lie, actually. I wonder if Agota Kristof came across it somewhere in its original French... Later, an excerpt from her madness-memoir Down Below, well worth reading in its own right, and some notes on magic.

Ithel Colquhoun :: is represented here, but only by a few brief essays and an excerpt from her single novel which might have composed for publication elsewhere, a set of pseudo-scientific observations. They're pretty great, though, and motivated me to read my copy of Goose of Hermogenes right away. With Carrington, one of the finer novelists of the original interwar surrealism -- now if only she'd written more of them. Apparently Peter Owens published two books of her travel writing, though, and the Brooklyn Public Library has a book she wrote about occultism and the Golden Dawn (of which Crowley was a part, I think I saw an anecdote somewhere that he once tried to seduce her, which is pretty amazing to try to envision. Fitting, though -- Colquhoun eventually became a Priestess of Isis, whatever that entails.


Laurence Iche :: An active member of underground surrealist group Main a Plume in Vichy France. It makes sense that there would have been a surrealist resistance unsettling the power structure with weird leaflets and such, but it's still crazy to imagine publshing such things in secret during Nazi occupation. I'd be terribly curious to see more of this material, Iche's and others'.

But the duck wanted to be eaten in the Spanish style, like a free man, and not with nettles as the donkey was suggesting.

Therese Renaud and Francoise Sullivan :: leading exponents of the Quebecoise "automatist" movement in line with surrealist ideas in the latter 40s, in poetry and dance respectively. I've never heard of any such thing as any Quebecois surrealist groups, so I'll have to look up more information on the automatists.

Dorothea Tanning :: Interesting greek-ish myth included here from an exhibition catalog for her new husband Max Ernst, in '49. Apparently she wrote a novel, Abyss, in 1947, happily contradicting (with Lise Deharme and probably others) the claim I'd seen that the only female surrealists to have written novels were Carrington and Colquhoun. Naturally, though, I can find out absolutely nothing about this book now. On the other hand, I've just snapped up a signed edition of her 2004 horror novel, Chasm, which sounds splendidly insane. Sadly, she died just 3 months ago, at the end of January 2012. Of course, she was 101 by then...
[image error]

Nora Mitrani :: I'm usually (unsurprisingly) less into the non-fiction bits here, but Mitrani is a quite brilliant essayist, turns out. Incisive sharpy-wide-angled queries into de Sade and cosmetics above others.

Joyce Mansour :: Egyptian-English poet, but the barely-mentioned-in-passing 1958 story collection Les Gisants Satisfaits sounds intriguing. It's untranslated, it seems, but I know Mansour has piece in one of the Daedalus surrealism collections, so perhaps it's from this.

Mimi Parent :: Another Quebecois surrealist I'd never heard about. Less of a writer, but I want to see more of her objects, very few of which seem to be online anywhere:


Remedios Varo :: Originally known to me mainly for her cameo as Carmela in her real-life best friend Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, Varo was also apparently author of "an extraordinary manuscript, De Homo Rodans: an elaborate chronicle of imaginary discoveries written in a quasiscientific style with an abundance of quotations in a humorous invented Latin, posthumously published in 1970." Unfortunately, very few of of this strange "hand-lettered limited edition" book exist; even Worldcat lists only a a single example. Quotes here, however.



Nelly Kaplan :: An exciting lead on two fronts, concerning a Russian Argentine who may have run away from home at age 17, drawn to Paris because "it was built on the ruins of a temple of Isis", only to become an assistant to filmmaker Abel Gance, then get draw into surrealism by chance meeting with Breton. First, she apparently directed docs on Gustave Moreau (narrated by Breton, incidentally) and the like starting in the 60s, then a number of feature films in the surrealist spirit, if not necessarily technique or style. I must see these. Second, the longest prose fiction yet included in this collection is a terribly enticing excerpt from Memoirs of a Lady Sheet Diviner (Les Memoires d'une Lisuese de Draps), concerning lost blasphemous Moreau paintings, vampires, and a women seeking employment or a place to lay low at "the Obsexion", some kind of mysterious far-east brothel. It appears, however, that neither this nor any of her other fiction (Le Reservoir des sens (the Well of the Senses, 1966) and Le Collier de Ptyx (1972)) has ever been translated -- and most looks quite out of print, in addition, though she's still alive. An unfortunately common enough story. Also included: two essays and an interview, all on film, all also very worthwhile inclusions.
[image error]

Unica Zürn :: I've had the name Unica Zurn in my head for quite some time, without really knowing why. So it's fitting fitting that she would turn out to be yet another surrealist artist and novelist. Though she died in 1970 (leaping from the window of longtime companion Hans Bellmer's appartment), she's even still in print. Excited, naturally.


Rikki Ducornet :: one of whose novels I've read before, but I'd filed her more into inspired-by-surrealism than Capital-S-Surrealism. (Which, how exactly to define that, of course). But she was apparently directly involved in collective surrealist publications and activity, and did many of the translations from French for this book. I want to give her another shot, now -- the book I had read was recent, so time to dive back to her earlier work in the 70s and 80s.

Nancy Joyce Peters :: with a good essay about Nelly Kaplan's 1976 feature Nea (see above).

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was delighted to see this book on Susana Gardner's list of books to be read. It's a marvelous anthology, bringing to light many of the lesser-known women Surrealists, particularly from France. Even though I deeply admire this book and grant it 5 stars, it's best to read it in tandem with Whitney Chadwick's Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, the reason being that Rosemont and Chadwick--while both resurrecting "lost" women Surrealists--each have quite distinct takes on the role of women (and their treatment by male Surrealists) in the early period of the movement. Like all histories, these both, as well, are contextual, particularly within the context of one another. I find it particularly helpful in my Rhetoric of Surrealism class, for example, to spend an entire month on women Surrealists, studying both of these texts within and against one another, asking students to conduct further research to determine for themselves which history is more accurate and/or what alternative histories might be exposed, interrogated, and/or accepted. To be sure, Rosemont has done "yeo-woman's" duty in unearthing the texts herewith. She should be warmly congratulated. This anthology (along with Chadwick's book) should be on every serious contemporary Surrealist reader's shelf.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surrealist Women: An International Anthology is divided into six parts: "The First Women Surrealists", "In the Service of Revolution", "Neither Your War nor Your Peace: The Surrealist International", "Surrealism versus the Cold War", "The Making of "May '68" and Its Sequels", and "Surrealism: A Challenge to the Twenty-First Century"...

The First Women Surrealists (1924 - 1929)...

I am the thought on the bath in the room without mirrors.

* * *

Time is a tease - because everything happens in its own time.

* * *

With the end of my breath, which is the beginning of yours.

* * *

The lion's claw embraces the vine's breast.

* * *

I want to touch serenity with a figure wet with tears.

* * *

Why this scale wavered in the darkness of a hole full of coal pellets?

* * *

Not to weigh down one's thoughts with the weight of one's shoes.

* * *

A game: Say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this: Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are htye doing? Try it, it's so easy. . . . You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.

* * *

The blue and the wind, the blue wind.

* * *

I cannot be reached.

- "The Blue Wind", Nadja, pg. 29-30

*

Purity! Purity! Purity!
I am happy! Happy!
PASCAL AND NIETZSCHE! And their shouts
And their PRIDE! AND ABOVE ALL!
Oh, above all
THEIR PURITY! AND BEETHOVEN...
AND even MORE! AND THEIR IMMORLITY...
PURITY! PRIDE! PAIN!

AND ORIGINAL SIN AND DEATH!
AND THE SPIRIT OF LIFE!
AND ALL MEN, LIVING!
FANTASIA! CAVALRY! DUST!

AND THE FEMALE, AND INTELLIGENCE!
AND THE WILL POWER! HA! HA!
AND THE AFFIRMATION OF LIFE!
AND LAUGHTER! AND SCORN! HA! HA!

AND YOU, THE PROLETARIAT?
AND YOU, THE SLAVES, THE FAMISHED!
AND YOU, MY TORMENTS?
AND YOU, MY DOUBTS AND MY CERTAINTIES?
YOU AND I, WE SHALL PERISH!

- "PURITY! PURITY! PURITY!", Fanny Beznos, pg. 32

In the Service of Revolution (1930 - 1939)...

I.
Embarrassed cold
in that splendid time when I was naked
I think about saying

far from there
from feet to head
THE SONOROUS SHADOW

Cries
like the seagull
I'm afraid of those eyes

atonal desire
for the first roots


II.
Living comet on the peak
such a one
who likewise plunges
does not possess the source of pleasure
I was
like the rocks
an extra immanent
truncated
evil-minded
but the murmuring makes me change
place and ink
to my own measure
like
a liquid
weight that obsesses me
finds its way in a dream
and turns

- "Half-Season", Simone Yoyotte, pg. 67-68

*

Why interrupt
the conversation of sleepwalking clocks
to ask them the dangerous way
When they will have named
sailboats icebergs sugar and ebony
and the humble silk of the moon
that knows how to fasten the squall's seine to the dawn
among so many breaths
a woodland voice will flow
The story of the cliffside path
Will be a path between statues and doves
and the plant that licks the flagstone
will lift its hand toward the iron
Path to the broken porch shelter of the pursued
night came morning gone
toward the gentle flock and the boat sleeping
against the temple of the river bank
to the bitter tree's bark
between the girl's teeth
road beneath blood under rock
Was it the stag throat slit by a thorn
but that would hunt at dark of night
that cried let us awake
where is the morning

- "Foreign Land", Greta Knutson, pg. 68-69

*

I missed
the book of my life
one night
when they forgot
to put a sharp pencil
next to my bed

- "The Empty Cage", Lise Deharme, pg. 70

*

Glances changed their source
A bell
made of stormy-blue bronze
chased off to the zenith of the world
by the white wing
of the lost skyline

Sublime sulphur
foam of solitude
on my forehead
the reason of the wind

* * *

Cave of bronze amplifier of the storms
of two hemispheres
where shadows cannot die

the stone owl's head
watches over
the sailors' town
limbo of springs not born
to love suffocated
under pairs of false lovers
false presences
false windows
opening to the wall of the night
false virtue of the weak

our bones curling in the fire
desert burnt by waiting
where rules the madwoman in the mirror

* * *

In the night of the beginning
the fog left
his blood
between the salty lips
beyond the eyes of the sun

* * *

For those parallel destinies
there is no horizon line
where they meet where they rest
where they flee those cruel fish
of anguish and discord
They swim between the shores
of these dark rivers
which separate lovers

The shadow descends a staircase of sun
down to the bottom of my heart

I think about the chaste and thoughtful loves
of these animals that unite
as if holding hands

- from "On the Bare Ground", Alice Rahon, pg. 82-83

*

When he went away
it was midnight at age twenty
He had his hands in Asia
and was following without understanding
the songs of winters for sleeping
the space to love you he said
with a quick blue motion
my hands are in Asia
and my heart is distant as shadow
I'll be back in the time it takes to love you
taking away the long countries
but when the mist had fallen
He became lost at the turn
then since the earth was round
He felt himself going mad

- "When He Went Away...", Marcelle Ferry, pg. 100

Neither Your War nor Your Peace: The Surrealist International (1940 - 1945)...

Beautiful as a high foamy wave spurting in a crystal ball.
Beautiful as a light breeze in the tulle of life.
Beautiful as a tear on a perfectly immobile face at the peak of a radiant day.
Beautiful as flame.
Beautiful as an immense fathomless sky pierced by a star of the greatest magnitude.

But beautiful as a sea sky and an Earth like the sea floor.
But beautiful as sea sky, and earth like sea floor...
Fascinating to see what man could be in this tableau...

Beautiful as a sleeper under the open sky in the swarming activity of a vast tropical night.
Beautiful as the fascinating decor of a great tropical midnight between two fingers with feline nails...
Beautiful as the dazzling fireflight of a multitude of fireflies on a calm horizonless sea on a marine night.
Beautiful as an iridescent soap bubble pierced by a fine pin and ceaselessly grazing a black dress.
Beautiful as a heart pierced through by a rainbow arrow.

Beautiful as a giant shadow moving slowly on a half-tint partition
Beautiful as movement
Beautiful as life with life's poison
Beautiful as the sun's blood

- "Beautiful As...", Lucie Thésée, pg. 146-147

*

Exactly three years ago, I was interned in Dr Morale's sanatorium in Santander, Spain. Dr Pardo of Madrid, and the British Consul having pronounced me incurably insane. I fortunately met you, whom I consider the most clear sighted of all, I began gathering a week ago the threads which might have led me across the initial border of Knowledge. I must live through the experience all over again, because, by doing so, I believe that I may be of use to you, just as I believe that you will be of help in my journey beyond the frontier by keeping me lucid and by enabling me to put on and to take off at will the mask which will be my shield against the hostility of Conformism. Before taking up the actual facts of my experience, I want to say that the sentence passed on me by society at that particular time was probably, surely even a godsend, for I was not aware of the importance of health, I mean of the absolute necessity of a healthy body to avoid disaster in the liberation of the mind. More important yet, the necessity that others be with me that we may feed each other with our knowledge and thus constitute the Whole. I was not sufficiently conscious at the time of your philosophy to understand. The time had not come for me to understand. What I am going to endeavour to express here with the utmost fidelity was but an embryo of knowledge.
[...]

- "Down Below", Leonora Carrington, pg. 150

*

Scissors strokes by the clock
with harpsichord fingers
in your phosphorus breast
that opens out into a fan's breeze
The wind that great sculptor of unique erections
in the game of ninepins of tottered days
Under the bowler hat of habit
adventures sew themselves up again
into fountains to resew the air
so that the paper lanterns may tremble
like a false eye
so that the lamps may be moth-eaten like the cries of chimneys in the wind
all those rotting breaths of films
when mountains are clouds at rest
with nostalgic grasses
feather dusters of rolling inventions

- "Scissors Strokes By the Clock...", Laurence Iché, pg. 156

*

I am in the rain, with black writing,
I am in the night with strange hands
I swim in the heat in the humid fear
of day and hate, I close my ear...
and the step the step of the stone that
falls is the space in the heart and
the man in the moon waving good-bye to
the boat that goes where the mouth
is red with a little word that parts
where the womb stands still beyond
speaking.

- "Womb", Sonia Sekula, pg. 164

*

Round the world with the rumpus god
Fishes on his soles
Fins on his heels
The golden sun in the middle.

His heart wreathed in ivy
His face filled with berries
His nearest hands lie on the rocks.

When he loses the trail
He flees to the abyss
And drops all the spoons.

- "Round the World with the Rumpus God...", Meret Oppenheim, pg. 165

*

Two battered at the Red Lamp Hitting the bars.
The shilling dropped darkness forced them up
And they lay sucking the corniced grape along the ceiling.
The corners of the room revolved and swayed
And tree trunks groaned.
Whole passages of time were sliced to pieces
As circling strands of snakes benibbled bits
While grey fish swimming in sawdust, glassy-eyed,
Carved sticky patterns, intricate as sin.
And slow - as the starfish crawls to meet the wave -
And slow, but moving as sand in quicksand,
The chariot arrived...
but they were gone

- "The Journey", Emmy Bridgwater, pg. 173-174

*

I try to catch the sea-gull with a silken cord but I find that the soft core becomes a fagged iron chain which tears my hands. The gull flies out to sea where it sits brooding. I see it fly back to the beach to join a lazy crowd of gulls where it is fed on human flesh by tanks and guns. I am horrified by the greedy eagerness of the speckled young birds. I find I cannot escape from the chain unless I too offer my flesh to the gulls. I wait... thinking of death and living death. I decide that out of living death I may see the gull dive into the sea once more.

- "The Sea-gull", Edith Rimmington, pg. 177

*

The rain's feet
beat upon the surface of the pond
the squall of the dazzling return

but you clutch your throat
thorny poppy
wild poppy
aborigine of despair

- "Sublimated Mercury", Alice Rahon, pg. 179

Surrealism versus the Cold War (1946 - 1959)...

I lay my head in an oyster shell. The grass turned ankle and I went to meet three travelers.

They said: "Come with us. The road is long and hard, but at the end there is a clearing where flowers laugh in the sun and a stream shines in the night." One traveler had a gloved hand. This glove represented the wail of the wind.

On the way I broke y thumb. When a bear came to lick it, I took up some pebbles and threw them behind me.

The second night I brushed against the fire cast away by the hastening stars and felt the burning caress of the moon.

Once at the clearing I picked up my sick feet an threw them into the stream.

I set my body down in the graves and shut the oyster shell....

- "I Lay My Head", Thérèse Renaud, pg. 207

*

To have white bouquets
She died young
White wreaths and white regrets

To have a white tumulus
She died in December
A large white garden and white weeping willows

To had white hair
She would have had to wait
Dragging through gray days living white wakeful nights

- "Pearl", Irène Hamoir, pg. 211

*

I dream. Youth is beyond the rain she arrives.
But walking the long-drawn embankments
Made to fly a hundred time in love on skimming water you shall speak to me.
Put back the dream you wake me only you.

Under the eaves swallow glitter

- "I Dream", Valentine Penrose, pg. 236

*

Hold your hand in your ear
And don't open
Our onto the south pole
There where the chirring star is,
In its chirp cone
That you must
Knock, knock to hear it.
The compasses' glass has frozen.
The tingling index finger pointed to the north.
Once and for all.

- "Polar", Jacqueline Senard, pg. 248

*

Into the red velvet of your belly
Into the blackness of your secret cries
I have ventured
And the earth spins round humming
The red earth of your poison-gnawed innards
A demon's blood flows blind river of your nights
Eats at your soft spots the inflammation of your derisions
Into the dark corridor of your eyes
Into the red satin of your death
I have ventured
And the earth spins round humming
And my head unbolts with joy

- "Into the Red Velvet", Joyce Mansour, pg. 253

*

Appointments you did not make
on streets you do now know
I shall wait
until the nights glide
over me and
I am transformed
into a tree

* * *

Once again time is shattered
in my hands
once again
you will be the silence
around me

* * *

To forget
the pine tree sound
of your hair
and your eyes
black stones
To forget these petrified days
far from you

I shall be water
green water
motionless
opaque
stagnant
I shall be water
where only you
can be reflected
nothing else

- "Night Words", Isabel Meyrelles, pg. 259-260

*

The light throws shadows
Behind my closed eyelids
My eyes know it's daytime
Darkness spurts with lightbeams
When sparks
Swirl up in the shade
It is nighttime
To stare at immobility
To drive the nail's glance
Between two solidified wings
Of motionlessness
And then my eyes know
That night has come
Enough! Enough! Enough!
I soar amidst the lights
Sparks of stars
Angrily I rip the vacuum
This void which only appears to be full.

- "Light Throws Shadows", Drahomira Vandas, pg. 264

*

In those rooms
the morning honey shall not enter
as those rooms are the mind's.
And yet the propeller-like sweetness
of your fair hair appears to me
under the opaque windowpane
I can dance snowfalls:
and at once discover myself
ready to tell everything
What if the ragman's youth comes along
Will you hold me responsible then?
- no yellow spells and little hope:
I can hear gondolas playing
with wind briny strings.
I deam up a mammoth's

- "In Those Rooms...", Marianne van Hirtum, pg. 268-270

*

My room has two doors
and one window.
One door is red and the other is gray.
I cannot open the red door;
the gray door does not interest me.
Having no choice,
I shall lock them both
and look out of the window.

- "The Window", Kay Sage, pg. 275

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose poetry, polemic and reminiscence from surrealist women from the 1920s through the 1990s. An absolutely monumental collection. Some of the editorial decisions in the second to the last section (The Making of "May 68" and Its Sequels) are questionable (maybe the selections should end after the dissolution of the Paris Surrealist group in 1969, especially since the material from the seventies and eighties is so sparse and might have fit better in the final section). I also think the final section (A Challenge to the Twenty First Century) should be split off and greatly expanded into a volume on contemporary surrealist writings by women (there are differences in curatorial choices and other reasons for not tacking it on to a historical collection such as this). The little artwork reproduced is all in black and white and kind of dull. I wish they would have stuck to simple black and white graphic work for reproductions or maybe done a color section. But I want to end by saying again that this is an INCREDIBLE collection and a must have for any serious student of the history of surrealist writing. Worth it for just the biographical introductions to the many, many, many authors and the great historical accounts of surrealism introducing each chapter.

[أزهار ~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

كم أحببته

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent anthology of women poets and writers in the first half of the 20th century. Very interesting collection of writers.

[Andrew]

There's some really amazing stuff in here, albeit counterbalanced by some decidedly mediocre stuff. And even when the writings are excellent, you can only take so much surrealist poetry and automatic writing at once... it gets tedious. On the whole, I like how Rosemont correlates feminism, surrealism, and everyday life. While she is on the defensive vis-a-vis women and surrealism, that doesn't makes her arguments any less cogent.

[Shayla Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading "Surrealist Experiences" by Rosemont I discovered this book. It is a must-read for any surrealism (and perhaps feminist) enthusiast. Art classes tend to leave out the women who contributed to the surrealism movement consequently, Rosemont covers a vast majority of these woman. One of the best anthologies I own!

[Anna Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first introduction to surrealist literature from a course that i took at saic. it was called... "surrealist literature". there were many under-recognized women writers that were either in the circle of surrealists or just on their own. it is a great book.

[Ldtingle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book introduced me to the poet/revolutionary Mary Low. Worth it for that alone. Buy, beg, or steal her Black Swan poetry-collage book "Where the Wolf Sings." She's a stunning talent.

[EIJANDOLUM · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Afloat on the lake, like lovely mad Ophelia, with water-lilies woven into my streaming soaking-wet hair…”