Mary Ann Caws at Crescent City Books

Crescent City Books hosts Mary Ann Caws at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 5, at their storefront (124 Baronne Street).

Caws will read and discuss the Poetry of Surrealism. She will be touching on the works of Andre Breton, Paul Eduard, Rene Char, and others.

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Author/translator/editor of over 100 published works, her essays appear around the world. She lectures frequently in Europe and the United States and is a regular commentator for a number of literary and cultural magazines in print and on line.

Her many areas of interest in twentieth-century avant-garde literature and art include Surrealism, poets René Char and André Breton, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group, and artists Robert Motherwell, Joseph Cornell, and Pablo Picasso. Conceptually, one of her primary themes has been the relationship between image and text. Black Widow Press has worked with Professor Caws to make available important Surrealist works in translation, including re-issuing out-of-print titles and releasing new translations with critical introductions and essays. Her Black Widow Press titles include The Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos: A Bilingual Anthology, 2007; Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology (revised edition, with additional poems; translated and edited by Jean-Pierre Cauvin and Caws) 2006; Capital of Pain (Paul Eluard, newly translated and edited by Caws, Nancy Kline, and Patricia Terry), 2006; and Furor & Mystery and Other Poems (René Char, translated and edited by Nancy Kline and Caws), 2011. Much more information can be obtained at: www.maryanncaws.com