America's quintessential modernist John Ashbery was shaped by his long engagement with French avant-garde literature, and this anthology shows how he repaid his debt with faithful and inspired translations into English. Here are Raymond Roussel's mindboggling Documents to Serve as an Outline and extracts from his experimental novel Impressions of Africa; selections from Georges Bataille's darkly erotic novella, L'abbé C; the entirety of Pierre Reverdy's prose poem, The Haunted House; and selections by Antonin Artaud, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Alfred Jarry, Odilon Redon, Jean Hélion, Iannis Xenakis, and even Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, represented by the 17th-century fairy tale, "The White Cat."