The Swallow's Testicle: Poems by, for, and with Hans Arp

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

This unusual book is a homage to Hans Arp, the Alsatian painter, sculptor, and poet who managed to invent and pass through a number of schools of modem art. Arp wrote in French (as Jean Arp) and German. Troendle has adapted poems from the French and rather surrealist side of Arp. “Adapted” is the right word: he goes beyond the originals and invents new poems, all in Arp’s rather childlike and whimsical spirit. The poems will be to the taste of some readers (those who like the strange, the surreal, the arbitrary), and others will find them whimsical and pointless. More interesting than the texts are the typographical experiments in which they are set. Troendle has set some himself and used the services of nine other page designers, including the Canadian avant-garde poet b p Nichol. The result is a book whose pages seem to swirl along in a series of typefaces. The collage and drawing techniques are often as riveting as the typography. The result is a book true to the spirit of Arp rather than to the letter, and the spirit was what mattered most to this endlessly innovative and playful writer. Undoubtedly the collection will appeal mostly to those who love experiment, but some readers who usually find verbal extravagances dubious will be attracted by its appeal to the eye. The poems are off-the-wall, a slang expression originating in the world of avant-garde art; their settings are delightfully off-the-page.