Selected Poems of Max Jacob

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff from the surrealist trenches
Review: From all accounts an extremely weird man, even by surrealist standards, Max Jacob left behind a fair amount of sprightly, entertainingly strange verse, much of which can be found in the present volume. The majority of the entries here are brief, fanciful prose-poems in the spirit of Charles Simic's "The World Doesn't End"; if you like one, you'll probably like the other. Poems like "'Max is a Lunatic' (Everyone)" goof on his own eccentric personality; others are surprisingly direct--and, among the French surrealists, pretty uncommon--expressions of religious belief ("Ballad of the Perpetual Miracle"). A fast, pleasant read.