Tristan Tzara, Author at Witness

Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara was a Romanian poet and one of the founders of Dadaism. His Dada manifestos were key to the development and dissemination of the movement. Tzara's tumultuous relation with Andre Breton led to Breton breaking from Dadaism and founding Surrealism. Tzara would later write the long poem "Approximate Man" and assist the French Resistance during World War II. Andrew S. Nicholson is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the author of A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire (Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University 2015). His poetry has appeared in magazines and journals including Colorado Review, Bitter Oleander, and Eleven Eleven and has been anthologized in New Poetry from the Midwest 2014 (New American Press).

White-Looking Countryside

By Tristan Tzara

Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 2 (Summer 2017)

for maya chrusecz the ten o’clock gold crushed death burnt the clay and gold window dividing good from water in leather squares and fixing the alert fish in place with a pin cooking golden insect eyes I am what buzzes bad in the heat in the beating of my striated heart the bones too are… [Read More]

Clever March Dance

By Tristan Tzara

Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 2 (Summer 2017)

ice breaks lamp leaks and your lungs are square they are a yellow trumpet the stars’ teeth postage-stamp of flower-shirted-jesus the pocket-watch turn turn you turn those black stones in my icy soul I am alone and I know I am alone and dance lord you know how I love green and thinness and because… [Read More]

The Lion Tamer Remembers

By Tristan Tzara

Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 2 (Summer 2017)

listen up earthen colors too late your laughter eats the sun for rabbits for chameleons grasp my body between two long lines when famine becomes light sleep sleep we feel so heavy blue antelope atop glacier we feel heavy ear inside the boarderland’s beautiful stones— listen to the stone old cold fishermen on the new… [Read More]