Guillaume Apollinaire

Apollinaire : Alcools

Author

In 1913, Apollinaire published Alcohols, his first important collection, which gathered fifteen years of poetry. While he was then influenced by a symbolism of decline, he distinguished himself with bold innovations: punctuation disappeared and recent inventions, such as aircraft and automobile, made their debut in poetry. Alcohols is a contrasting work, where the Eiffel Tower and Mirabeau Bridge are surrounded by f…

• Poetry

Apollinaire : Calligrammes

Author

Seven months before his death, Apollinaire published poems "of peace and war", written from 1913 to 1916, under the title Calligrammes. This neologism, which he forged from the words "calligraphy" and "ideogram", announced an original mode of expression: the poem-drawing, which combines language play and game of forms. The words here draw a cigar, there a watch or a dove, and cross the page in the form of raindrops …

• Poetry