NIGHT OF LOVELESS NIGHTS by ROBERT DESNOS (translated by Lewis Warsh)

10. NIGHT OF LOVELESS NIGHTS by Robert Desnos. New York, NY: Ant’s Forefoot Books, 1973. 7x10¾" 32 pages. (T)

Offset, saddle-stapled chapbook. Black-and-white cover by Warsh, plus six images printed with the text. Published in an edition of 300 copies. “The Ant’s Forefoot 9 now available in New York at the 8th Street Bookstore, Gotham Book Mart, Discovery Bookshop, or by mail from The Coach House Press, 401 (rear) Huron Street, Toronto, 181 Canada.” This is Ant’s Forefoot 10. 

“I was living alone in Stinson Beach, Spring 1971, when I did this translation, and sent it—with photos and collages—as a gift to David Rosenberg, who almost in the same breath decided to publish it as part of his Ant’s Forefoot translation series. I didn’t send it to him with the thought that he would publish it—but there it was, with all my artwork intact, including the photo of Desnos writing in his sleep which I copied from Breton’s Nadja. I had studied French for years in high school and college, but what did I know? One morning that summer of 1971 I woke up in Stinson Beach and there was David, visiting from Toronto, where he had gone as a draft dodger. Back in New York, a few years later, we reversed roles, and I acted as his editor on the mimeo edition of his translation of David’s Psalms, Blues of the Sky.” (LW)