Product Description
Critics have compared the work of French writer Henri Michaux (1899-1984) to such diverse artists as Kafka, Goya, Swift, Klee, and Beckett. This anthology contains substantial selections from almost all of Michaux's major works, most never before published in English, and allows readers to explore the haunting verbal and pictorial landscape of a 20th-century visionary. 30 photos . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Outstanding!
Michaux is a genius. He should be read many times. His language and images are haunting and thrilling. His work is very inspirational and insightful.
The translation is also excellent.
I can highly recommend him.

In The Company of Lautreamont
This early 20th century psychonaut is the latest embodiment of the Poet Maudit, intuitively following the program set out by Baudelaire and brilliantly brought to fruition by Rimbaud and Lautreamont and added to substantially by the surrealists.It is, however, Michaux's connection to the author of Maldoror that draws me to him, and as in Ducassean texts, Michaux's writings reveal numinous monsters aplenty, strange landscapes, psychic flora and fauna that are noted, illuminated from all sides, catalogued in precise detail.A selection of the art is given as well.These are good to excellent translations, as noted in the previous review.The selection and chronology makes this book stand out over the New Directions standard that we've long depended on for our picture of Michaux.

Indispensible translation of a modern master
Even if you speak French, this book is an indispensible source on the great, 20th. century poet Henri Michaux. One of the important things that David Ball establishes is the chronology of Michaux's publishings. Michauxoften published a string of small books between major collections - themajor books overlapping, partially containing and redacting the earlierbooks in a highly complex and confusing way. In some cases, the larger workeven duplicates the title of a smaller work. Ball untangles this gnarlytime-line once and for all.

This is the most extensive selection inEnglish from all phases of Michaux's long poetic career. It includesexcerpts from his prose works - the travel writings and the mescalinwritings, although nothing was taken from A Barbarian in Asia and MiserableMiracle. There are some plates that provide a view of Michaux's oftensuperb graphic art.

The translations stand up pretty well againstRichard Ellman's in Selected Writings (also highlyrecommended); however,this is a much larger work. Ball is perhaps on the literal side as atranslator, a respectable choice. Probably, the only way to translate apoet impeccably, is to have a team of accomplished poets working in directcollaboration with the living poet who also speaks the second languagewell. And, of course, that's not the case, here. As far as I know, amongmajor 20th. century poets translated into English, only Jorge Luis Borgeswas tranlated in this arcadian manner. That said, there's nothing wrongwith these translations, except that David Ball, though possessed of a goodear, is not himself a poet, or trying to use a translation of a poem as anoccasion to write another poem. Again, this is a respectable choice. In asense Michaux is easy to translate. His language, though highly individual,is clear and direct (except when he's creating his bombastic new words).It's this language and conscience (John Ashberry's critical insight) inservice in service to a deep and powerful visionary faculty, that makesMichaux one of the truly great poets of the 20th. century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Always profound
Michaux is always worth reading. The reader delves into metaphysics, surrealism, philosophy and spirituality.
This book has great dimensions and directions.

This book is in print!
This important selecton of Michaux's writings is not out of print.It is currently in its third paperbook printing with New Directions. ... Read more

Product Description
In this collection of short pieces and drawings, Henri Michaux, one of 20th-century France’s finest poets and artists, describes the anguish and the ecstasy of his encounter with the hallucinogen mescaline. First published in 1956, Miserable Miracle is an early exploration of the connection between drugs and creativity. “Michaux is the poet laureate of our insomnia.” — The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Insightful and intriguing
Michaux has a wonderful way with his words, images, metaphors and rhythms. His spiritual journey is always transformative. He is a brilliant painter with his words. ... Read more

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"With Michaux, it was passion at first glimpse. . . . He's not even a poet . . . he's something else. I still consider Michaux to be something else entirely, . . . I think of him as an anti-poet, an anti-god, a Buddha, a cure for my suffering. Michaux demonstrated a different method and reason for writing. . . . He suggested another way of being, writing, thinking, observing, so unlike any I had experienced..." Nin Andrews, ed., from the book's introductory essay, "Finding Henri Michaux." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

AN EXPLORATION OF A UNIQUE WORLD
Belgian-born poet/artist Henri Michaux was, depending upon your source,either an enigmatic genius or an enfant terrible.Maurice Blanchot called him "l'ange du bizarre." Whatever the appellation, his oeuvre was the surreal.

An inveterate traveler, Michaux made Paris his home in 1922.At about the same timethe writer began drawing, and then wed his graphic works to his poetic endeavors.He wielded ink like a sword, parrying, jabbing, slashing it on paper.This was an exercise that he believed released subconscious expression.Later, he became accomplished in the use of watercolor.

"Untitled Passages By Henri Michaux," so titled due to the artist's large number of untitled drawings and his book "Passages," is not only the first collection of his work but is a masterful blending of texts and images, enabling one to further explore the unique world of Henri Michaux. ... Read more

Product Description
Previously available only as a limited editon, Henri Michaux's Ideograms in China is now available as a New Directions paperback. Peerlessly translated by the American poet Gustaf Sobin, this long, beautifully illustrated and annotated prose poem was originally written as an introduction to Leon Chang's La calligraphie chinoise (1971), a work that now stands as an important complement to Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's classic study, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Coming alive in its lines
A decptively simple, lyrical and shifting riff on Chinese characters and caligraphy by a master poet, one whose work sometimes slipped into the pure sense of the figured line, gesture, action. Ezra Pound, as he lapsed into silence at the end of his life, began a translation of this work, as a bookend so to speak of his own response (mediated by Fenollosa) to the Chinese character. Here we have Michaux translated by American poet Gustaf Sobin, who lived many years in Southern France before passing away in 2005. The text was originally an introduction to Leon Chang's La Calligraphie Chinoise (will have to search this out and test my French) but it stands on its own as a powerful poem, and that is how it needs to be read, as a poem.

The afterward by Richard Sieburth 'Signs in Action' helped me better see the connections between the act of wiriting (especially caligraphy), Michaux and his lines/signs, Pound and Fenollosa. It is a thought provoking read in its own right.

Good Introduction - worth reading
If you want to get the "feel" of the Chinese Ideogram, this is a good introduction and by all means this is book is well worth your time and $. If you are a hard core poet and writer however I would recomend Ernest Fenollosa's "The chinese written character as a medium for poetry" co-written with Ezra Pound ... Read more

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Henri Michaux is widely recognized as a major twentieth-century French poet and painter. Although his fascination with universal languages has attracted the attention of several of his critics, it has up until now been treated as a marginal concern. Henri Michaux: Poetry, Painting, and the Universal Sign argues that his ideas on what might constitute a universal language are central to an understanding of his works. It suggests that both his ambivalent articulation of his relationship to the languages and literary traditions of his native Belgium and adoptive France, and his efforts simultaneously to exacerbate and subvert the differences between words and images, are rooted in Enlightenment theories of the relationship of the self to nature and its language Rigaud-Drayton's study makes a substantial and original contribution to the study of this complex artist, exploring the intricate relationships between word and image in his poetry and paintings, and his quest for a single, unifying language or sign. ... Read more