The Loveliest Vowel Empties – Collected Poems by Meret Oppenheim
The Loveliest Vowel Empties – Collected Poems by Meret Oppenheim, translated from German and French by Kathleen Heil / ISBN 9781954218086 / 125-page paperback published in 2023 by World Poetry Books / bilingual edition
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“The singularity of Meret Oppenheim’s work is such that nothing seems dated … the range of the work and its quirky self-assurance are striking.”- Gary Indiana, The Village Voice
The collected poems of legendary Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim, for the first time in English.
“What an ingenious way of translating this superbly ingenious poet/artist! Over and over, Kathleen Heil selects a word which many would find out of the way, a true delight. To me, it feels as deeply surrealist as possible. Such a gift proves true throughout this all-in-all inventive rendering. The extraordinary Meret Oppenheim deserves no less!” – Mary Ann Caws
“I am in awe of Meret Oppenheim’s poems, a seismic force heretofore unknown to me. Her aesthetic compatriots include Alejandra Pizarnik, Georg Trakl, Max Jacob, and Paul Celan—artists of deep symbol, deep void. Kathleen Heil’s translations are themselves works of the highest literary refinement and ingenuity. To read Oppenheim’s lyric bulletins, conveyed tactfully into English, is to feel that we are plunging for the first time into the pure waters of poetry itself, impervious to fad. No dross, no affectation: instead, Oppenheim gives us strangeness, tone, translucency.”- Wayne Koestenbaum
