Pppppp: Kurt Schwitters Poems, Performance, Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics

Rating:
Summary: Touching Nonsense
Review: Like his Merz collages, Schwitters' poems take dissociated elements and glue them to together to make an aesthetically pleasing whole. As an artist and a writer Schwitters has the supreme ability to create beauty from cast-off fragments, using them to his own designs of witty word-play and absurd juxtaposition. Fantasy abounds and is mixed with advertisements, fragments of conversation, and themes of desire. In both his writings and his collages he sought to "erase the boundaries between the arts." Usually only known for "Anna Blume", Schwitters was an avid writer and this book collects his absurdist plays, nonsensical proses (sic), essays about his life and work (and Dada, poetry, and language), and over 100 of his unique poems. Of all the Dada literature (perhaps excluding Arp), his is the most pleasing and re-readable. Unfortuately some of his German punning and word-play is lost in translation, but can be seen in works that were originally written in English. Never before has nonsense been so emotionally charged or touching (and lets not leave out humorous and outrageous). This is the best collection of Schwitters' work in English that I have come across. Highly recommended.