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picasso's
poetry
I have abandoned sculpture engraving and painting to dedicate myself entirely to song. — Picasso to Jaime Sabartés April 1936
It was in early 1935 that Picasso (then fifty-four years old) began to write poetry—a writing that continued, sometimes as a daily offering, until the summer of 1959. In the now standard Picasso myth, the onset of the poetry is said to have coincided with a devastating marital crisis (a financially risky divorce, to be more exact), because of which his output as a painter halted for the first time in his life. Throughout 1935 and 1936, Picasso largely ignored paint and canvas and immersed himself in written expression.
The result was a series of
notebooks, sketchbooks, journals, even napkins filled with poetry
that, like his paintings, are dense in imagery, relentlessly
energetic, and frequently enigmatic.
Poetry became his alternative outlet. The flow of words begins abruptly (“privately” his biographer Patrick O’Brian tells us) on April 18 1935 while in retreat at Boisgeloup. (He would lose the country place the next year in a legal settlement.) The pace is rapid, violent, pushing and twisting from one image to another, not bothering with punctuation, often defying syntax, expressive of a way of writing that he had never tried before. In all of this—surrounded by writers from Apollinaire and Stein to Breton and Paul Eluard—Picasso was fully aware of the poetry in his life, and when he first took pen to paper in April 1935, it wasn’t as an isolated or naive voice but as a participant in what was then a verbal art in transformation. The poetry through much of 1936 was probably his dominant activity (the painting by most accounts had then been put aside), and he would pursue it on an almost daily basis. When Gertrude Stein dismissed the poems he read to her, it probably marked the low point of a friendship which by then was almost over. “The egotism of a painter,” she would later write in her 1938 book Picasso, “is an entirely different egotism than the egotism of a writer.” And again: “This was his life for two years, of course he who could write, write so well with drawings and with colours, knew very well that to write with words was, for him, not to write at all.” By contrast the response of the younger French poets was immediate and strongly in Picasso’s favor. Like Stein they recognized in Picasso’s art a mode akin to writing, but where she would draw a line between the genres, they were enthusiastic to his crossing over into poetry. Because of that the first publication of his poems came shortly after he started writing—still a curiosity today, since, for all his reputation, he would never publish them again. Andre Breton had arranged in 1936 a special issue of Cahiers d’art, with a number of Picasso’s poems translated into French, accompanied by Breton’s own introduction (“Picasso poète”) and shorter pieces by Eluard and Georges Hugnet. Over the next two decades, he often returned to writing, producing three plays in addition to the 300-plus texts.
e e cummings (1925)
Picasso
you give us Things which bulge:grunting lungs pumped full of sharp thick mind
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night moves
in a wine glass sleeves of a sleeveless dress knotted around its stem and a bull’s head sleeping, breathless tangled in the scent of pearl and warm flesh standing on a drumbeat balanced by a prism’s deceptive stammer
6 june xxxvi
the morning of the world
i have a face cut from ice a heart pierced in a thousand places so to remember always the same voice the same gestures and my laughter heavy as a wall between you and me
the ones who are most alive seem the most still
behind the milky way a shadow dances
our gaze climbs toward the stars
red nude
you swept the ashes of winter lit red and nude drawn naked with smoke and coal still glowing in the shadow of paper flowers pressed to walls of plaster and stone
whisper
the shiver of hands blind without memory and so, friendly still yet sweet like the words forgotten to the tremble of lips
quiet there are no surprises here rest your eyelids until they become stone rest your heart until it stops
(it beats now only for itself in some secret place)
the artist & his model
turn your back but stay in view at the same time (now look away, anything else confuses)
stand still without saying a word
you can’t see but this is how i separate day from night
and the starless sky from the empty heart
when he stopped writing her
the letter always bled for her for her eyes (brown as those old bottles in the medicine cabinet) bleeding words like teardrops yet without spilling onto the green tile floor those words always pure only staining the paper glossy black ink blood like muslin stuck to an old wound those words always strong yet blurred, obscure words only a scholar would find obscene
happy are those who die because they have returned to those first crumbs of dirt that fed us to that first hole to that soft black and smell of coal
night train to horta
she wants head male bonding siamese twins tango 69
me i travel by images
corporal landscapes the mouth is the tunnel quick, now the tongue the train
windows on the world unmistaken
still same refrain we will meet we will meet somewhere again
end of the line
with the power of torso speed of the memento lost and then found
and always the blood engine pounding puffing steaming its blush on the cheek of night
dogs
dogs eat the night buried in the yard they chase the moon in a pack the white of their teeth compared to stars
the window closes against them iron bars in transparency
life closes against them
the morning will crush them to dust with only the wind left to stir them up
noon
the palms keep vigil over the tired countryside. orange trees bear clusters of golden sun ripened in the red noon. cypress clean clouds from the azure where insects glimmer, sparks born of incandescent sunlight. i listen to the rhythm of silence scented by fabulous blossoms. and my spirit is drawn towards these heavy desires that haunt the coolness of shade.
litany to the moon
the moon with its lunatic face dog’s grin i throw shouts at it in the night and it hides scudding behind clouds the world is mad and i run after birds pigeons like a kid in the park trying to spit on them
give me a gun and i’ll blow off my head one tight squeeze like on a breast on a whores tit until it hurts saying ouch it hurts to cut a hole through your skull until everything hurts, even a quick kiss
cold eyes in the night see nothing and the moon is silent on the topic yet rising from the low bough of some hedge beneath the bush of some garden come words, mumbled love copulating briefly on black air into silence then two shadows of each sex rushing away with their disturbed laughter a fading night breeze toward dawn
christ in the desert
lips false as a beach damp a pearl on the lip dampened the blackness of a tear
falling
aside (wet leaves in a book will not dry)
falling
the memory dies slowly
a plate held before each face saying who am i
the moon
(the moon after all)
bulletin
fresh feet in sawdust rust before noon
a personal
mature man holding his nose to life desires young woman who is indifferent to oranges and longs for those days before umbrellas
colors without danger
careless grass of our sins as if by luck on the number seven a prism you capture a rainbow while you finish your days in prison
insensible to the shimmer of your crimes ice cream proves the ingenuity of our suppers
angel hair
some balding angels weave together the soldiers of god the work of a spider the star of despair local insects, tennis players in spite of the nets in spite of the insolent blue which limits us which nonetheless continues to charm the readers of english magazines
outlines
in short-shorts one evening in joinville venus the slut put the bite on me
her pretty knot of hair an illuminated manuscript made me stiffen like a cuirassier
we had a good time her hole and my stick waiting for the bus headed toward paris
cold of the wolf
a hand puppet unable to put up a fight the hand goes crazy – excuse me if i’m clumsy
remember the other months a december that closed its mouth cleverness (that’s what moves me)
we new ones are out in the cold
lint resembles snow to me clinging to your eyelash why haven’t i been able to see which of us is right
let’s repeat it before i forget that people die in every season
watch the roses fade
fishbones
bleached beneath a 10 kilowatt moon anticipating geometry the smell of soap that same instant calling into question bisexuality without flesh or the vibration of blood
graffiti
heartbreak parallel to eye without razor
sobbing
wet leaves pressed in a book will not dry
next
tears do not outlive themselves
discovery
for another generation
still
when in doubt quote rimbaud no verbs no more
choosing the vowel “o”
that i’m not going to remember again
séance without a ghost
tues. exhausted piano teeth mozart pere gnashing slashing sound barrier stretching zoology beyond the bird cannibals in the a-z azimuth
weds. mirage of red awnings all-night resort cannibals in the azimuth stairwell décor
thurs. cold as leprosy embraced yet somehow curled
fri. frail departure voice to kill height hair duck drake cold as geology young rocks flame (hidden within the blink of eye)
oranges from the south of spain
stars hang out at night linen left to dry
red geraniums along the balconies nodding, nodding willing to agree to anything just to keep their color
a gang of kids running through the streets faceless pranksters the moon a plate held before each face who am i? saying who am i running through the streets saying who am i
the shadows of the buildings becoming cats that move away the trees immobilized left to stand alone in the dark rubbing their bark from regret like cicadas
oranges have more delicacy softly falling, falling in the groves on the hills softly eaten, eaten by the earth swallowed whole as if by a snake not earth as if by millions slithering in the groves at night millions stalking the oranges that fall softly softly to the earth
hunting there in the groves that form a ring around each town
primary colors
navigator’s balcony cocktail hour rocket orbit ocean liner rising clenched no teeth no guernica no bam bam bam correspondent notary republic address book dial figure 8 charred with a thousand jigsaw pieces false as a beach chiaroscuro black on black graveyard womb naked milk glass lit footprint tourism by candlelight and flare vaccination fatigue puke fingernail fish moving a bandaged echo kill him kill her familiar bell music kill them both kill them all stretched shirtsleeves spanish toffee slashed tires (failure as a painter he shaved his wife’s fur coat) bust your balls Barcelona red alert knock-kneed broken squeezebox no hands standing room only ladies first (please) unbuttoned interrogation coffee rolls (stop) marine’s vegetation (stop) early morning tea (stop) armless menus (stop) pink cathedral fingers (stop)
and (begin again) move
we move
moving inside an eye this eye that advances step by step
odalisque in aspic
stunted short visionary dwarf snatch level too much too much pussy panorama cut the crap lay on your back change of venue blue blue dark clouds too snatch of black cotton 100% virgin feminine products need not apply c’mon but wait no more shit but where’s our precious depths lost our thoughts consciousness raised to new depths then lost as if fucking weren’t enough but hey look just drop it no asking for a hand now the clap is extinct vagina fungus a dinosaur what we’ve all been working for, right the liberated cunt without love without guilt
sure, but meantime it’ll kill you homicidal inundation or better yet you’ll go blind looking for it
landscape without a window
fingers of a fountain clenched unclenched pointing to heaven without understanding
lips false as a beach damp a pearl on the lip dampened the blackness of a tear falling
the memory dies slowly a plate held before each face saying who am i
the moon
(fresh feet in sawdust rust before noon)
the moon after all
a view of the sea
the sun slumbers on the rim of a straw hat
same initials
i don’t have the time to wait for dawn
who’s promised to meet me address unknown
life in the open air
i’m listening to another sea at the depth of shellfish
you play with the ball without doubting it
sometimes the sun goes down not far from the shore
christ in the desert no.40
rapist with a radio playing schumann to dilate women
christ in the desert no.45
a memory yes but after yes atomic foreskins pink and fresh yes but no no dream rocoque no krupp haloes no religious artifacts made of lampshade skin beneath a million kilowatt moon no anticipating geometry the smell of soap nor calling into question human sexuality without flesh nor the vibration of blood that angry lobe hammering overhead that echo bite again and again clenched no teeth no Hiroshima no again again black graveyard womb milk-glass lit bandaged echo kill him kill them familiar bell music kill them all (with)
the stenographer’s notebook no.1
first line lips are false as a beach next mcarthur’s in chicago next the big blond takes the elevator down next pearl on the lip next shalimar stirs the canine cock all right I like that let’s start a new one do it what what do you have don’t fuck up wheres the apostrophe goddamn you’re cruel now back now whack it again whack it again I want it to go back whack it press it whack it okay new line
i want elevator i want uh i want don’t ask the bellboy for the time just take the elevator to what? to notions? to the lingerie shop? ah fuck you grandma new line
all right one more time okay suck the gin-socked tongue that’s “soaked” period once again the elevator down paint the pretty tie (cough cough) thai next big buick big ass like fish put a ? after fish take it back take it back you bitch okay that’s not bad you do all right ah fuck song of india in the desert at night put “” marks around song of india & desert song in capital letters hit shalimar then cadillac red lips then cunt like a seashell with a gin-soaked tongue start new line
all right does mcarthur stick his socks in the bathtune at night that’s bathtub the dog howls at the moon buries it in the backyard snakes lose their skin cocoa butter slick water on the brain of the big dark blond song of india clit clit clit big fish ass big v8 you bitch keep up with me painted rocks like a pretty tie fast car long legs and a broken heel now dead no not dead yet um estee lauder goes down on price-waterhouse in a swedish bath bellboy watching this is his reflection in the mirror no silver one-sided next line
big blond trampled by elephants with wrinkled knees starch is not chic all gone shalimar stirs the k-9 cock sequined ass in the moonlight cadillac red lips hungry dog eats tail becomes himself bad dog play dead okay what do you suggest bad doggie bad comma bad comma hungry dog go for the tongue you dumb bitch keep going new line
what do cactuses(i) have??? fronds fur what are their things called new line
dog hates gin go for the breast stupid bitch good dog dry dog poor dog pour blond water of life piss yellow a thai like painted rocks period next
i want head down legs up i want sequined ass only snatch level damp dampened dampest pussy panorama clit clit clit blue blue down there feminine azure with clouds too got it odalisque in blue period have mercy on me no no new fucking line what are you filling that thing up with okay stop it for now
the stenographer’s notebook no.2
poor buick good dog we’re almost done bad moon bellyful of big dumb blond last line i want uh a memory yes before yes atomic foreskins pink & fresh yes hunger for the womb clit clit clit sex junk food rapist with a walkman playing schumann to dilate woman oranges have more delicacy oranges orages oral fruit caught in the act the memory here it is a certain man crippled since birth caught in the act sex without hands his only defense: today today is only the beginning this is only the beginning a sick man’s argument okay last line
while in the street already leaves are falling
man in the hat
man who wears a hat sits still near the back unmoved by the world or the exposed breast of a statue (brain waves do not discharge through a fedora)
tag attached: bald is sanitary
oranges have more delicacy raw smelly and afterward singing allons enfants de patrie ding dang dong like that, all frog-ese so we don’t understand chanteused stiff basso profundo to excite to let us see with the clarity of a dream curled with hate set firm, firmer in the arms of a sleeveless girl then slung to sea level white as a leopard’s eye
remember its peroxide bathed, bleached inclined on the pillow just at the angle of expectancy without a hat sideward glance and the crippled heels of angels sparking down the hall
bulletin: young man willing to wear false beard to ease the pain for all
or trumpet blues broken played horizontal touched by seaweed hands in the light of boats (unfurled)
slowly
and the memory dies slowly half-forgotten, half-remembered
halved again
slowly
only to begin again
grim molecules of love
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