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Reverdy, Pierre (1889–1960) By Caws, Mary Ann
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Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne, France, on 13 September 1889, and died in Solesmes, home of the St Peter’s Abbey, on 17 June 1960. He was the famously understated poet of cubism (‘please God let me not be well-known’, he is said to have prayed), and was associated with the cubist poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, with Juan Gris, and with Picasso. He had a famous, on and off again love affair with Coco Chanel—after which he left, at 37, for the Abbey. A poem of his stands at her grave. The ‘pope of surrealism’, André Breton, called him ‘the greatest poet of our time’.