GAMMEL, Irene and Suzanne ZELAZO. Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven.

(Cambridge, MA and London): MIT Press, 2011.  First edition.  Hardcover.  24cm by 18.5cm.  418 pages.  As a neurasthenic, kleptomaniac, man-chasing, proto-punk poet, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven is our new favourite artist.  This volume, published more than a century after her arrival in New York, is the first major presentation of the poetry by the flabbergasting and flamboyant Baroness Elsa, “the first American Dada.”   As an agent provocateur within New York’s modernist revolution, “the first American Dada” not only dressed and behaved with purposeful outrageousness, but she set an example that went well beyond the eccentric divas of the twenty-first century, including her conceptual descendant, Lady Gaga. Her delirious verse flabbergasted New Yorkers as much as her flamboyant persona. As a poet, she was profane and playfully obscene.  With its ragged edges and atonal rhythms, her poetry echoes the noise of the metropolis itself. Her love poetry muses graphically on ejaculation, orgasm, and oral sex. When she tired of existing words, she created new ones: “phalluspistol,” “spinsterlollipop,” “kissambushed.” The Baroness’s rebellious, highly sexed howls prefigured the Beats; her intensity and psychological complexity anticipates the poetic utterances of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.  One cool lady.  The volume is illustrated throughout.  A very good example in dust jacket.  Praised by The New York Times as one of the notable art books of 2011.