SOURCE: A review of pppppp: Poems Performance Pieces Proses Plays Poetics, in Sulfur, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Spring, 1994, pp. 201-08.

In the following review of pppppp: Poems Performance Pieces Proses Plays Poetics, Perloff discusses the pitfalls of translating Schwitters's "abstract poetry. "

In a 1924 manifesto called "Consistent Poetry/' which appears in Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris's beautifully produced and edited selection of Schwitters's literary works, we read:

Classical poetry counted on the similarities between people. It considered the association of ideas as unambiguous. It was mistaken. At any rate it built its foci on associations of ideas: "Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" ("O'er every mountain peace does reign"). Here Goethe does not only want to indicate that there is quiet on mountain tops; the reader is supposed to enjoy this peacefulness in the same way the poet, tired from his official duties and usually functioning in an urban environment...