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| Propellers |
Propellers: A New English Translation of Guillermo de Torre’s Hélices, translated by Willard Bohn and co-edited by Daniele Corsi, brings a groundbreaking work of European avant-garde poetry to English-language readers for the first time in nearly a century. Written between 1918 and 1922, these poems explode with the energy, urgency, and experimentation of the post–World War I period; drawing from Italian Futurism, French and Chilean Creationism, and the radical vision of Spain’s Ultraist movement.
De Torre, co-founder of Ultraism and a towering figure in the Spanish avant-garde, famously declared, “Motors sound better than hendecasyllables.” In Propellers, first published in 1923, he set out to reinvent poetry for the machine age. The result is a visually stunning collection that merges text and design through what he called his “spatial propeller procedure,” in which words radiate across the page like the blades of a spinning engine. These kinetic poems challenge linear reading and invite readers to engage with poetry as a visual, spatial experience.
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| Propellers |
This new edition stays true to the radical spirit of the original. Bohn and Corsi not only preserve de Torre’s bold typography but also offer sharp, illuminating commentary that situates the work within its rich artistic context. The poems pulse with a fascination for speed, technology, and modernity—qualities inherited from Futurism—but also resonate with the inventive power of Creationism, where the poet is not a mirror of reality but a maker of new worlds.
With Propellers, readers are invited into a thrilling moment in literary history—when poetry took flight, shattered conventions, and captured the rhythm of a world in motion.
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ISBN-10: 0916304116
ISBN-13: 978-0916304119
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