The Cabbage of Paradise
The Merzbook and Other Poems
Author: Colin Morton
This unusual book combines
material from Colin Morton's notable, long out-of-print
1987 collection The Merzbook: Kurt
Schwitters Poems with his concrete poems and Dadaist-influenced
texts and collages. These dramatize and create dialogue
with the great German artist's life and with an aesthetic
whose impact continues to be felt (e.g., in the bp Nichol
tradition in Canada). Morton's inventive treatment vividly
illuminates the situation of art and the artist in both
the last century and our own.
How good to have a new version
of Colin Morton's playful exploration of the life and work
of Kurt Schwitters back in a new and expanded edition. With
"trans-elations" of Schwitters's own works, delightful
examples of Morton's concrete and sound pieces, and an even
tighter series of poems tracking Schwitters as he lived,
loved, and created his many kinds of Merz, The
Cabbage of Paradise offers readers, new and old,
an exciting engagement with a powerful stream of twentieth
century art.
~ Douglas Barbour
Colin Morton ... has achieved
the best balance between the varying demands of the documentary
form: between objective fact and subjective interpretation,
between documentation and lyricism, between his persona
and himself ... The Merzbook strikes
me as a quite major addition to the genre.
~ Stephen Scobie, Malahat Review
Author Bio
