The Big Game (Black Widow Press Translations)

Poet/translator Marilyn Kallet (author of "The Love That Moves Me", "Circe, After Hours", "Packing Light: New and Selected Poems") has here accomplished a feat that most, if not all, lovers of Surrealism have been waiting and hoping for: a sustained and thorough translation of perhaps the "purest" of surrealists both ideologically and existentially: Benjamin Peret.Born in Rezé, France on 4 July 1899, Peret's life is an example of absolute intransigence and commitment to the surrealist cause. Dropping out of school as a young man and being kicked out of the army, his radical politics and untamed love for the fantastic stood up against a life of what otherwise was marred by poverty and the harshest kinds of response society could muster towards an artist.Prior to Kallet's translation of "Le Grand Jeu", I could only locate bits and pieces of it in "Death To The Pigs" and some of the collections of surrealist writing by Michael Richardson. This volume shows clearly that Peret was not going to depart from Breton's dictates or his own imagination. Pure surrealism from the real deal and an obviously dedicated translator. (Her translation of Eluard's work is equally prescient.)

Peret's imaginative writings stand leagues above his Surrealist contemporaries. Funny, grotesque, broad, and beautifully infantile in nature...... may Peret's nonsense live on!

Accept no imitators. It should have been Andre Breton who loyally bowed to the feet of Benjamin Peret, instead of the reverse. Pure lysergic bliss.

I do not hate this book as I only looked through it.I thought this would be a humorous book, it is mentioned in my mother's notes.I will not be reading this book.I will donate it to my local library.

Enjoyment