SAINT GHETTO OF THE LOANS ~

 

R E A D    M E

In 1945, after wartime on the run and in the Resistance, Gabriel Pomerand (1925-1972) met the young Romanian refugee Isidore Isou and together they launched the Lettrist movement. They espoused a philosophy of constant creative renewal in which, among other things, letterforms were to be the basis, the underlying principle, of future artwork. Along with their followers, Pomerand and Isou instigated dozens of performances, exhibits, and publications in a decade-long burst of energy. Pomerand was the mouthpiece of the movement in its first years. He organized scandalous public lectures, gave reputedly remarkable performances of sound poetry, painted oils, and made an award-winning short movie. His prolific writing over the years included innovative artists books and novels, including Saint Ghetto of the Loans, 1950 (republished by UDP in 2006 with an English translation), as well as screenplays, cultural criticism, and book reviews.

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE

MARIANA MARIN ~

      

On the Fifth Floor




Poetry,

when the putrefied loneliness of each morning

thunders inside your skull.

On the fifth floor of a drab apartment building

in a notorious proletarian district,

poetry restores to you the migratory instinct

of small gray birds.

How much love

              "When must everything depart from us?

               Does everything abandon us?"

(yes, time once held cherry trees and ivy).

In your rabbit-like shamelessness

what kind of death

did you make your bedfellow in these recent years?

Oh, poor earthbound terror!

Poetry,

when inside your skull, like a miracle,

you feast on yourself.

There will come a time for frost and for the snout,

a time for the whip that lashes your cheek

and for small gray pigs.




————————————

Mariana Marin
Paper Children
translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006