Picasso Surprises

Today's announcement of the discovery of 271 works of art by Pablo Picasso is astounding. That these pieces have been languishing in a storage trunk at an older couple's home, and that the couple practically had to beg art authorities to take them seriously is even more astounding. And just when I thought I could be surprised no more, I learned that Pablo Picasso was a poet as well as a visual artist. Who knew? Certainly I didn't!

Apparently, Picasso took to the pen in his later years. In the small sampling I've read, his poems have the same collage-type quality that we see in many of his paintings.

Here's a sample:

15.5.43
the flute the grapes the umbrella the armor the tree and the accordion the
butterfly wings of the sugar of the blue fan of the lake and the azure waves
of the silks of the strings hanging from the bouquets of roses of the
ladders one and incalculable outsized flood of doves released drunk on the
cutting festoons of prisms fixed to the bells decomposing with its thousand
lit candles the green flocks of wool illuminated by the gentle acrobatics of
the lanterns hanging from each arc string and the definitive dawn

               — Pablo Picasso
               — Translation from French by Pierre Joris