Afternoon After Midnight (English and French Edition)

Dan Pel's poems are marvelous in their accomplishment, BUilt on the French surrealist tradition--with a unique voice of his own--he imagines us a new world in his poetry. At moments the reader may be tempted to shout, That's just perfect! Preface You are going to think I am excessive when I tell you that this book contains the perfect poem particularly when I also tell you that, as one who has studied surrealism for a long time, I still can not tell you what a perfect poem is. Yet, bilingually, in French and in English, Dan Pels has written what I found myself exclaiming was the perfect poem. Now I am tempted not to tell you which, as that will motivate you to read every poem as a challenge to either refute me or reaffirm my own delight and amazement. Shall I tell you what made me exclaim as I seldom do when I read through books of poems, That s perfect? First, I have to tell you about surrealism and Dan Pels poems. When Andre Breton wrote his Surrealist Manifesto, he set in motion a movement which would defy definition. Even scholars and anthologists have declared that a surrealist poet is one who declares himself to be a surrealist poet and that no other set distinction can be applied. Breton, Philippe Soupault, Robert Desnos, progenitors of the movement, sought to rebel against form; to allow for total free association and uncensored language. Most of what you read here is in that tradition, surrendering not just poetic formalism but even standard English syntax. Pels does not do this simply because he was, first, a ParisianFrench speaker. He sheds rules and delights in new linguistic inventions in his lingua franca as well as English. The result is poem after poem which requires us to think, What could these words in a row possibly being doing together? Better than that, we feel reassured that we need not explain, but rather simply take great pleasure in the newness of the language. Others of Pels poems do make sense. This is not a deficit here, but rather, a reassurance that the author is not totally mad. Rather, he is crazy like a fox and into the mix of strange images, juxtapositions and new coinages, he gives us a glimpse of his strong social values, his love of life, his gratitude for just being here, and being a poet. Dreams figure heavily into Pels poetry, which makes sense as surrealism often has either a dreamlike quality or at least the same level of incongruity and absurdity as dreams. But Pels, always savvy, can turn a dream back into a reality. That is a phenomenological fact that speaking of what can not possibly be, in truth, brings it into being. Bertrand Russell flirted with surrealism but was, instead, credited as a brilliant linguist when he pointed out that our mentioning Pegasus was all it took to make a winged horse real. Discussing a square circle creates one. Dan creates a new world in his poems. It dwells in the essence of life in Very Simply; in the silliness of being in love in Fun and Love; in the nowness of moments observed which are neither real nor unreal in Head to Head. One can t be much more surreal than in From Beginning to End. You have read long enough to be rewarded. Let me point you to what I think is, simply, a perfect poem: I Think of You. In it, there is contained all the romance of courtly love; all the art of a poet who contemplates and defines poetry; all the brevity and symmetry that make a poem work. And this it does in both French and English. Dan Pels poems are marvelous in their accomplishment. Surreal! Dr. David B. Axelrod