In post-World War I Paris, everyone loved the poet Pierre Reverdy. The Cubists and Surrealists tried to make him their own. Modigliani painted him (pictured); Coco Chanel may have dated him. But in the end, Reverdy belongs to no one.
He desires to remain unknown. “Let’s go somewhere else where no one looks at us,” he begs. His work, though, cannot be ignored. His poems are carefully stacked into an elegant landscape of words. The adoration of the avant-garde makes him claustrophobic, so he dwells on themes of entrapment. To him, the world has gone askew and we are sliding down a melancholy, windswept path.
