Pierre Reverdy

I chose to research poet Pierre Reverdy because I have never heard of him before and am curious as to his style of writing.  After reading various poems one thing that struck me the most that that his poems didn't rhyme at all, and instead they told kind of a story and were easy to read and interpret.  The language that he uses in his poems is simple and easy to read, but at the same time is very visual so as I am reading I can picture the scene on my mind.

Another aspect of the poems I read by Pierre is the perception that the poems are not happy poems, rather they carry a serious, dark tone in which the reader has to be able to relate to in their own way.  The setting and themes of the poems tend to be centered around night time, and take place at a house or building.  I am curious to know why he write this way when the setting could be anywhere, or during the daytime where there is much more activity than at night.  His tone is also a little bit depressed and maybe he is a lonely man because his writings reflect a sort of lonesome feeling where even though he is surrounded by nature and sounds, they don't seem to mean anything to him.  This poem shows this:

NOMADThe door that won't open
The faded hand
Beside a broken glass
The lamp smokes
The sparks start fires
The sky is blacker
From the roof
Some animals
Without their shadows

A look
A somber stain

The house where no one comes  


Or this one as well:



THE SOUND OF THE BELL

All grows quiet
The wind passes singing about it
And the trees shiver
The animals are dead
There is no longer anyone
Look
The stars have stopped shining
The world no longer turns
A head is bowed
Hair sweeps across the night
The last bell that remains standing
Rings midnight

As you can see these poems are very descriptive but also very solemn and depressing.   In a biography of Pierre written on the Poetry Foundation Website, it states this about Pierre's writting: "the surrealists praised Reverdy as the greatest living poet. His poems were short and fragmentary with a sharp visual appearance which was compatible with the cubist feel for plastic values. The loneliness and spiritual apprehension which ran through his poetry attracted the surrealists" (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/pierre-reverdy).  This is how other readers and writers viewed and reacted to Pierre's work, which shows how influential he was during the surrealist movement.