SOURCE: "Escape into New Languages: The Avant-Gardist Ideals and Constraints of Andrei Codrescu's Poetry," in Sagetrieb, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring, 1987, pp. 21-39.

In the following review, Cornis-Pop discusses the experimental, proto-surrealistic style of Codrescu's poetry.

     Having avantbiographed the world
     To make another come right out of it
     I have certain scribbler's rights
     On the next one—endlessly impregnate
     The self about to be designed.
 
     I praise the lava holes
 
     whence issued my first passport.
                     (Comrade Past & Mister Present 34)

A Risky, Experimental Style?

Andrei Codrescu, "the Involuntary Genius of American surrealism," defies easy description. In his case the very label of "surrealism" seems partly inappropriate and confining. As his newest book, The Disappearance of the Outside makes clear. Codrescu has little patience for the watered down, domestic variant of surrealism "adrift/today/in the Mall"; and even less for the international "poetic sludge used by translators and mandarin poets to...