Mini-Reviews
The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry. Paul Auster, ed. 1984.
French poetry is dull. All that conservative neo-classicisim. Who can tell one French surrealist poet from another? None of them is as good as Neruda or Aleixandre. I love the idea of French poetry. I love American and Spanish poetry influenced by French poetry. But French poetry itself is not as great as it should be. Pessoa is more interesting than Apollinaire. Sorry. Jabès doesn't have a bigger vocabulary than Racine.
I'll save Ponge and Reverdy, though. Along with parts of Michaux, Artaud... Someday I'll "get" Char. And where are the women? There's only one here. There must be others.
You must have missed my earlier post on why I hate duende.
ResponderEliminarI do love *French poetry,* and this is in fact a good anthology. What I was trying to say is that French poetry is never as good as French poetry ought to be in my imagination of it. There's always that gap between the expectation and the reality. That's part of the experience of reading French poetry, and it always has been. Bonnefoy is a bore, isn't he?
Contemporary peeps I recommend: Emmanual Hocquard, Olivier Cadiot, Jacques Roubaud, Pierre Alferi, Anne-Marie Albiach.
ResponderEliminarI like Bernard Bador.
ResponderEliminarThose Bador poems were my favorite translations in the Eshleman book you reviewed (thanks for the excellent review btw).
ResponderEliminarThey're among my favorites too. That's the first I ever heard of him. Not dull.
ResponderEliminarHi Tony!
ResponderEliminarI don't have a good sense of Larbaud yet.
ResponderEliminarWhich Raphael are you? Rubinstein?
ResponderEliminar