City Lights' poetry editor revisits the lion of Surrealism, Andre Breton - 48 hills

"In the last six months, City Lights poetry editor Garrett Caples has ushered new editions of two surrealist tomes to market, an act rife with literary significance. In February, a reissue of Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia, 1943-1966: Pocket Poets No. 20, originally published in 1967. And on August 26, the first English translation of André Breton's final book in Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays, 1952-1966, translated by Austin Carder from the French version originally published in 1970-and to be fêted at City Lights in a Thu/11 launch party."

"As early as 2004, Caples has explored the inextricable connections between the two surrealist luminaries: Breton, a founder and theoretician of the original surrealist movement, and Lamantia, a delighted devotee who decamped to New York City at the age of 16 to receive an audience with an exiled Breton in 1944. Furthermore, Caples contends that the two books serve to elegantly bookmark an important transitionary period in Surrealism's sphere of influence, and create a conversation between two distinctive schools: the old guard Surrealism of post-WWI Europe of which Breton was a leader, and the rise of a later, distinctly American version from 1966 on."

City Lights released a reissue of Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia, 1943–1966 and the first English translation of André Breton's Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays, 1952–1966. The Breton translation by Austin Carder derives from the French 1970 edition and was scheduled for a City Lights launch. Lamantia traveled to New York at 16 to meet an exiled Breton in 1944 and later produced work collected through 1966. The paired publications frame a transitional moment in Surrealism, linking post‑WWI European Surrealism led by Breton to a later, distinctly American iteration emerging around 1966. Surrealism is presented as a framework for liberation.

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