Blaise Cendrars was a pioneer of modernist literature. The full range of his poetry--from classical rhymed alexandrines to "cubist" modernism, and from feverish, even visionary, depression to airy good humor--offers a challenge no translator has accepted until now.

Here, for the first time in English translation, is the complete poetry of a legendary twentieth-century French writer. Cendrars, born Frederick Louis Sauser in 1887, invented his life as well as his art. His adventures took him to Russia during the revolution of 1905 (where he traveled on the Trans-Siberian Railway), to New...

Ne a La Chaux-de-Fonds le 1er septembre 1887, Frederic-Louis Sauser aura tres vite la sensation qu'il est de trop, et l'envie de se sauver. Ce qui le conduira en 1904 a travers le Russie, puis a New York en 1911. Ces annees d'aventures et de misere deboucheront sur sa premiere oeuvre, les Paques, et sur un nouveau nom, comme pour une renaissance. Apres les cendres, la braise. Blaise Cendrars: Je suis le premier de mon nom, puisque c'est moi qui l'ai invente de toutes pieces. De retour a Paris, Cendrars frequente les peintres et les poetes de Montmartre et de Montparnasse. Apollinaire l'aidera...