She might be the “charming chimney” in this poem. Critic Marc Poupon refers to Laurencin’s having a toy flute.

trolley line: I think Apollinaire is referring to the swivel device atop the rod that connects an electric tram (trolley) to the overhead wire, but to translate his trolley as trolley might mislead readers to imagine an entire trolley car or trolleybus. Trolley line suggests the overhead wire, and thus the sparks from the contact points. Perhaps Laurencin’s frizzy hair reminded the poet of electricity.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE HOUSE OF WALK-OVER ↩

Walk-Over is the brand name of an American shoe company, founded in the eighteenth century, whose products have been sold all over the world. For more information, go to www.walkover.com. Michel Décaudin expresses some doubt as to the authorship of this poem, which was first published in 1952.

ANNIE ↩

One of Apollinaire’s poems that was inspired by his love for Annie Playden, who immigrated to the United States. He and she had been in the employ of a German vicountess as tutor and governness, respectively. Apollinaire wrote a number of other poems inspired by Playden, such as “The Song of the Badly Loved” and “The Emigrant of Landor Road.”

On the coast of Texas / Between Mobile and Galveston: Apollinaire’s geography is slightly askew here, a mistake induced perhaps by his misreading, in translation, of The Quadroon (1856) by Thomas Mayne Reid, which mentions “the coast from Mobile to Galveston, Texas.” (See also the note on the wa wa goose in “The Windows.”)

Mennonite: Playden was not a Mennonite, but her father was such a strict Anglican that he was known locally as “the Archbishop of Canterbury.” Playden herself organized a Sunday school group in Germany. Even her full name reinforces the impression of purity: Anna Maria Playden.

buds or buttons: The orignal French uses one word that means both of these, boutons.

THE AUTUMN CROCUSES ↩

In the first publication of this poem, lines 2 and 3 are joined, making it a sonnet in anapestic tetrameter and rhymed couplets. It was possibly written in the fall of 1901 or in 1902, when Apollinaire was living in Germany and feeling an unrequited love for an English girl, Annie Playden.

BEFORE THE MOVIES ↩

The manuscript version of this poem was written on the back of a bulletin from Agence Radio and dated March 20, 1917, and published in Nord-Sud, issue number 2, dated April 15 of the same year. Nord-Sud was edited by the young poet Pierre Reverdy. Despite the light attitude in this poem, Apollinaire felt that the cinema would provide amazing opportunities for a new kind of art, that, for example, future epic poems would be created in the form of movies. In an article in the March 1, 1910, issue of L’Intransigeant, he wrote that “the phonograph and the cinematograph have for me an unparalleled attraction. They satisfy all at once my love of science, my passion for letters, and my artistic taste,” an assertion borne out by his applauding like an enraptured child as he watched the films of the Fantômas series. He even wrote several film scenarios. Apollinaire’s colleagues Ricciotto Canudo and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti were major theoreticians of the future of cinema.

THE BRAZIER ↩

This poem was initially published under the title “La Pyrée” (“The Funeral Pyre”). Apollinaire admitted to a friend that “The Brazier” was not his most accessible poem, but he also said (in a letter to Madeleine Pagès) that it was one of his favorites. Writing to his friend Toussaint Luca in 1908, he said that in it he “was simply seeking a lyricism that was simultaneously new and humanistic” (Œuvres poétiques, 1060). Francis J. Carmody has pointed to numerous echoes between this poem and the poetry of Rimbaud.

Paul-Napoléon Roinard: Roinard (1859–1930) was a poet, playwright, artist, and friend of Apollinaire.

Our hearts from lemon trees are hung: Perhaps this reference to hearts as lemons (a fruit associated with the Virgin Mary) derived from his having once seen golden hearts in a chapel devoted to her.

Amphion: In Greek mythology, when Amphion played his harp, stones magically moved to form the wall of Thebes.

the Tyndarides: The mythological twins, Castor and Pollux (the Gemini), who appear in the form of St. Elmo’s fire to help sailors in distress. Sometimes the two are depicted as snakes.

Désirade: A small island off the coast of Guadeloupe. The name, which echoes the French word désir, appears in other writings by Apollinaire.

the worm Zamir: In Jewish legend, Zamir was a worm who helped build the Temple of Jerusalem by using magical powers to cut stone. Apollinaire mentions it in a 1908 article on André Salmon: “The worm Zamir who was able to build the Temple of Jerusalem without using tools: what a stunning image of the poet” (Œuvres poétiques, 1060).

sphinxes: Scott Bates has tentatively speculated that Apollinaire might have been alluding to the sphinx as a female symbol of erotic wisdom. He points out that in Latin sphinx is slang for “prostitute.” Hence the sphinxery (Apollinaire’s neologism) as a brothel.

THE CAVALRYMAN’S FAREWELL ↩

Written in 1915 at the front as one of a suite of poems requested by Apollinaire’s former lover, Marie Laurencin, this poem, like the others, appeared in Calligrammes as a free-standing work. The poem’s first line—his most famous one—might have derived from an ironic Polish song, “How Lovely It Is in War,” which also echoes the title of a satirical English popular song published in 1917, “Oh! It’s a Lovely War.” A few strangely obtuse commentators, apparently not bothering to read the entire poem, have singled out the first line as evidence that Apollinaire glorified war.

FESTIVAL ↩

Work of the fireworker: Given that this poem begins “Feu d’artifice” (“Fireworks”), Apollinaire’s “Artifice d’artificier” is more specific than the literal “Artifice of the artificer.” In addition to fireworks, he is also alluding to an artillery term in common use by French soldiers at the time, when the munitions handler (the man who supplied the shells and checked them for readiness) was called the “artificier.”

the roses of Saadi: This is the title of a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859), an actress, singer, and prolific author of poetry and prose, much admired by Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Breton, and Aragon. “The Roses of Saadi” is one of her best-known poems. Saadi Shirazi was a major medieval Persian writer.

4 O’CLOCK ↩

Written at the front, when Apollinaire was serving in the artillery. He sent this poem to Madeleine Pagès (1892–1965), his fiancée and the person who sent him the soap, in a letter dated October 13, 1915. In a later letter to her he wrote, “Nine days without washing, sleeping on the ground without straw, ground infested with vermin...One of the parapets of my trench is partly made of corpses...No writer will ever be able to tell the simple horror of the trenches...” (Steegmuller, 299–300).