Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Translated from the French by Dan Bellm. Bellm's translation of THE SONG OF THE DEAD completes the translation of Pierre Reverdy's major works to English, and is published by Black Square Editions. The cover, an image created by Picasso, is from the original French edition of Le chants des mortes. Written in the aftermath of World War II in northern France, where Reverdy was a partisan in the Resistance movement, THE SONG OF THE DEAD is a remarkable document of dissociation and shattering, refraining from documentary or narrative in favor of revealing troubled states of soul. Reverdy's sure command of image amidst the emotional atmosphere of life-in-death in postwar France creates a work of strange eloquence and grandeur. THE SONG OF THE DEAD was first published in 1948, in a handwritten edition with one hundred twenty five color lithographs by Pablo Picasso.
