Bay Area Poet ALAN BERNHEIMER provides a long overdue English translation of this French literary classic—Lost Profiles is a retrospective of a crucial period in modernism, written by a co-founder of the Surrealist Movement. Opening with a reminiscence of the international Dada movement in the late 1910s and its transformation into the beginnings of surrealism, Lost Profiles then proceeds to usher its readers into encounters with a variety of literary lions. We meet an elegant Marcel Proust, renting five adjoining rooms at an expensive hotel to "contain" the silence needed to produce Remembrance of Things Past; an exhausted James Joyce putting himself through grueling translation sessions for Finnegans Wake; and an enigmatic Apollinaire in search of the ultimate objet trouvé. Soupault sketches lively portraits of surrealist precursors like Pierre Reverdy and Blaise Cendrars, a moving account of his tragic fellow surrealist René Crevel, and the story of his unlikely friendship with right-wing anti-Vichy critic George Bernanos. The collection ends with essays on two modernist forerunners, Charles Baudelaire and Henri Rousseau. With an afterword by Ron Padgett recounting his meeting with Soupault in the mid 70's and a preface by André Breton biographer Mark Polizzotti, Lost Profiles confirms Soupault's place in the vanguard of twentieth-century literature.
CASEY SMITH is a poet, print-culture historian, and language artist. His ephemeral texts have appeared on the walls of galleries, in films and videos, on private property, broadsides, lithographs, screenprints, pigment prints, street posters, artist catalogues, chapbooks, edible books, helium balloons, classified ads, Japanese NBA fan sites, golf pencils, impacted dirt, and so on. None of his poems have appeared in The New Yorker or Poetry.
Location:
Bridge Street Books is located 5 blocks from Foggy Bottom Metro, next to Four Seasons in Georgetown at the end of M street
open Monday - Saturday: 11:00am - 9pm
Sunday: 12pm - 6pm
(202) 965-5200
In business for over twenty years, Bridge Street is one of a rare breed these days--a successful independent bookseller. It has what is certainly the best poetry section in Washington, well-stocked in alternative poetry and poetics as well as mainstream. Bridge Street also has extremely good selections in Philosophy, Politics, Cultural Theory, Women's Studies, Film, Music, and other areas. They also have a plethora of quality sale books.
Manager (& well-known poet!) Rod Smith has been organizing readings in the Washington Area since 1988 and has brought Rae Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, Lee Ann Brown, John Cage, Kevin Davies, Lyn Hejinian, Lisa Jarnot, Alice Notley, Tom Raworth, Lisa Robertson, Leslie Scalapino, Chris Stroffolino and many other important writers to DC.