The greatest surrealist/dadaist poem?

For my part: Never anyone but you - Robert Desnos.

White Giant Leper of the Countryside by Tzara is a good candidate, though different poems are wanted for different moods, and that might not suit every occasion...

My favorite surrealist poets are Lorca and Desnos. Lorca's POET IN NEW YORK, for me, is the greatest collection of surrealist poetry. I also love Desnos A LA MYSTERIEUSE. Some of Peret's poetry is good, too.

here it is
http://vimeo.com/4386491

Does he have a monocle in his hand?

desnos is incomparable

I'll not deny Desnos, mais non. But of course the subject of this thread is silly. There is no single greatest poem, surrealist, dada or otherwise -- only many great poems. I'm not sure who's translation he is using in the video clip-- the title accords with Caws but I think some of the line readings are different. Here is yet another translation:

the leprous white
giant of the landscape

salt groups itself in constellation
of birds on the tumour of wadding
in its lungs starfish and
drawing pins balance
microbes crystallize in
palm trees of muscles seesaws
hello without a cigarette tzantzantza
ganga
bouzdouc zdouc nfoùnfa mbaah
mbaah nfoùnfa
macrocystis perifera to embrace the
boats surgeon of boats
clean humid scar
idleness of brilliant lights
the boats nfoùnfa nfoùnfa
nfoùnfa
i force candles into his
ears gangànfah helicon and
boxer on the balcony the violin
of the hotel in baobabs of flames
the flames develop in
sponge formation
the flames are sponges
ngànga and strike
the ladders climb like
blood gangà
the ferns toward the woolen
steppes my chance toward the cas-
cades
the flames sponges of glass the
mattresses wounds mattresses
the mattresses fall wancanca
aha bzdouc the butterflies
the scissors the scissors the scissors
and the shadows
the scissors and the clouds the sci-
ssors the ships
the thermometer considers the ultra-
red gmbabàba
berthe my education my tail
is cold and monochromatic
nfoua loua la
the mushrooms oranges and the
family of sounds beyond the starboard
in the beginning in the beginning the triangle
and the tree of voyagers in the beginning

my brains depart for hy-
perbole
the kaolin swarms in its cranial
box
dalibouli obok and tòmbo and tòmbo
his belly is a big cashbox
here intervene the drum major
and the clapper
for there are zigzags on his
soul the reader begins to shout
he begins to shout begins to
shout then in the shout there are
flutes that multiply – some
corals
the reader wants to die perhaps
or dance and begins to shout
he’s a skinny dirty idiot he doesn’t un-
derstand my verse he shouts
he’s one-eyed
he has zigzags on his soul
and lots of rrrrrrr
nbaze baze look at the submarine
tiara that unravels in golden
seaweeds
hozondrac trac
nfoùnda nbabàba nfoùnda tatan
babàba

Agree that all have won, and all must have prizes, but I've just finished Mary Ann Caws fantastic Collected Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos, and can't recommend it highly enough. A huge bilingual selection of his amazing poetry, backed up with articles and novel extracts. I was going to review it, but the comparing the book with The Voice of Robert Desnos from William Kulik is going to be a complex task. To cut a long story short, you probably need both.

I absolutely love "Sonata in Urlauten" by Kurt Schwitters, first published in the magazine De Stijl (as far as I know).

http://www.costis.org/x/schwitters/ursonate.htm

Maybe it's just because it's one of the first I actually heard performed though.

Schwitters is the true genius of this heterogenous group. His time has yet to come.

I visited the merzbarn in the Lake District where he did his final merz installation recently. A long way from Frankfurt.