SynopsisYvan Goll is one of the great lyric poets and authors of the twentieth century and is at the same time arguably the most neglected poet of the twentieth century. Goll was in the avant-garde of various literary scenes from the beginning. A central figure in the German world of Dada and Expressionism in Berlin, he was a founder alongside Eulard and Apollinaire of the French Surrealist movement in Paris. Author of some fifty books of poetry, plays, fiction and essays, and recognized in Europe as one of the continent's greatest bilingual writers, Goll is relatively unknown in the United States. It is the "simple visionary grace" of the poems themselves and Yvan Goll's importance to twentieth century literature that have been the driving forces behind translators such as Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Patchen, Paul Zweig and Nan Watkins, who translated the work in this collection of important poems written during the all-too-short arc of his life. Book jacket., "Goll was in the avant-garde of various literary scenes. A central figure in the German world of Dada and Expressionism in Berlin; a founder alongside Eulard and Apollinaire of the French Surrealist movement in Paris; friend and collaborator with Picasso, Leger, Dali, Braque, Chagall, Tanguy and James Joyce; playwright and precursor to Ionesco's "Theatre of the Absurd," and Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty"; the celebrated editor of Hemispheres magazine in the U.S. and friends of William Carlos Williams, James Laughlin of New Directions, and Kenneth and Miriam Patchen, among others."