Pierre Reverdy’s short story Haunted House, originally published in 1930 in a collection of prose tales called Risques et Perils, is very different than his typically oblique, allusive and dreamlike poetry. Rife with mock rhetorical grandeur and ironic asides, Haunted House was lauded and included in Andre Breton’s list of ten books he would take to a desert island.About the AuthorFrench poet Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne in 1889. In 1910 he came to Paris, where he knew no one, but he soon met Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, as well as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Juan Gris, who later illustrated his books. During World War I he edited Nour-Sud, a review that published Apollinaire and Jacob, along with the early work of Breton, Tzara, Aragon, Soupault, Huidobro, and Cocteau. In 1926 Reverdy left Paris for the village of Solesmes, renowned for its monastery choir, where he live until his death in 1960.
 
About the Translator: John Ashbery is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and has translated the works of Stephane Mallarme, Giorgio de Chirico, Raymond Roussel, Max Jacob and Alfred Jarry. Since 1990 he has been the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.