BAYAMUS and CARDINAL PªL¶T¹O
By
Two cryptic and amusing novellas from a late (1910-88) Polish master of the avant-garde. ""Bayamus"" is a language-drunk romp that wryly explores the transformative effect on reality produced by the practice of ""semantic poetry"" (""ways of making familiar words look as if they were not familiar"") and features such arresting characters as silent-filmmaker Karl Mayer; a Chinese giant; and a ""Homo Triped,"" who is born a boy and becomes a girl. ""The Life of Cardinal PÓlãt°o"" deliciously revises Plato in a lively fantasy about a truculent cleric determined to rid the world of poets, and hence of heresy. Both stories are dense, demanding, hilarious, and richly enjoyable.