Pppppp by Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), inventor of his own personal branch of Dadaism called “Merz,” is best known for his collages and for his monumental constructions called Merzbau. But Schwitters’ stated goal was “to erase the boundaries between the arts” — he said his poems were “a kind of drawing” while his collages “demand to be read.”

This collection, culled from five volumes of Schwitters’ writings published in Germany, introduces the total work of art that is Merz via Schwitters’ words rather than images. Included is the complete text for the “Ur Sonata,” which, as renowned poets/editors/translators Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris comment, “is to sound poetry what Joyce’s Ulysses is to the twentieth-century novel.”

288 pages, paperback