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as Robert Bly, Michael Benedikt, and Charles Simic. Together with more
recent French prose poets such as Michaux and Ponge, presently avail–
able in English and American editions, the writings of major nineteenth–
century prose poets have in no way been neglected, be they creative or
critical. Moreover, William Carlos Williams, John Ashbery, and Michael
Palmer have provided compelling examples of prose poetry. Of course,
all these writers have written plenty of verse, most of it free.
Pilling and Kennedy point out Jacob's complex personality and acro–
batic performances regarding his identity. We can hardly overlook his
visionary conversion to mystical Catholicism, his association with
Cubism, or his talent as a painter. Moreover, the authors point out that
Max Jacob related the prose poem to other arts. The title" A Bit of art
crit" is no less revealing than similar statements by Aloysius Bertrand,
Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, for he intimates that spatial considerations
often outweigh the unfolding of time.
The translators have included the
1916
preface in addition to their
own introduction. At the time, avant-garde writers were, as we have
already suggested, prone to include prefaces and manifestos. Because
Jacob insists a poetic text must exert aesthetic impact, we may find it sur–
prising that he was not uniformly laudatory in his discussion of Baude–
laire and Rimbaud, whose prose poems are noted for their aesthetic
power. According to Jacob, Baudelaire is prone to romantic disorder
while Rimbaud's visionary moments cannot serve as models for younger
poets. Marcel Schwob and Aloysius Bertrand practiced the prose poem
in a more acceptable form insofar as they relied on brief texts where style
closely fitted narrative. Style requires a carefully chosen means of expres–
sion. Jacob practiced this theory with humor and forbearance by para–
doxically calling an occasional text in
Le Cornet
it
des
"Not my style of
poem." In relishing such paradoxes and deliberately displaying dispro–
portions he shows the close affinity of poetry to gamesmanship. Chance,
rather than determining intentions, predominates in his poems. On the
cover of this volume appears a solid cup, with letters--composing the
author's name-being tossed in the air.
It
prepares the reader for the dis–
order, chance, and surprise so characteristic of the text. The identity of
the poet is exemplified by a game of chance, just as the poems themselves
are supposed to seem random, as in "Frontispiece":
Yes, it dropped from my nipple and I never even noticed. Like a
boat leaving the anchorage of a rock with its crew and the sea not
giving so much as a quiver more than usual, and the land not hav–
ing the slightest inkling of this new adventure, a new poem fell
from my Cybele breast and I never even noticed.
