For decades readers and critics have acclaimed Yves Bonnefoy as
France's greatest living poet. His most recent book of verse, "The
Curved Planks," crowns an oeuvre that has won him the highest
international honors. More than any other single work, this
sequence embodies the astonishing variety of Bonnefoy's art. A rich
fabric of themes, styles, and genres, it balances aesthetic
complexity with heartfelt directness. This bilingual edition of
"The Curved Planks" sets the French texts alongside English
versions by the noted translator Hoyt Rogers, who has collaborated
closely with Bonnefoy in crafting poems that re-create the
freshness and vision of the originals. This volume also includes a
preface by the renowned poet and critic Richard Howard and essays
by the translator that situate "The Curved Planks" in the author's
body of work. All assist in introducing the English-language reader
to Bonnefoy's profound poetic gift. Yves Bonnefoy has published
seven major poetry collections, numerous studies of literature and
art, and an extensive dictionary of mythology. His work has been
translated into many languages, and he is a celebrated translator
of Shakespeare and Yeats. He lives in Paris.
Hoyt Rogers translates poetry and other literary works from the
French, German, and Spanish. He is also the author of a book of
poems, "Witnesses," and a volume of criticism, "The Poetics of
Inconstancy." He lives in the Dominican Republic. For decades
readers and critics have acclaimed Yves Bonnefoy as France's
greatest living poet. His most recent book of verse, "The Curved
Planks," crowns an oeuvre that has won him the highest
international honors. More than any other single work, this
sequence embodies the astonishing variety of Bonnefoy's art. A rich
fabric of themes, styles, and genres, it balances aesthetic
complexity with heartfelt directness.
This bilingual edition of "The Curved Planks" sets the French text
alongside English versions by the noted translator Hoyt Rogers, who
has collaborated closely with Bonnefoy in crafting poems that
re-create the freshness and vision of the originals. This volume
also includes a foreword by the renowned poet and critic Richard
Howard and two comprehensive essays by the translator; all assist
in introducing the English-language readers to Bonnefoy's profound
poetic gift. "Yves Bonnefoy represents contemporary French poetry
at its classic best: sober and yet soaring, full of invocation and
desire: 'Let this world endure . . . Let this world remain.' This
volume--thanks to Hoyt Rogers, Richard Howard, and the input of
Bonnefoy himself--is a splendid celebration of the depths of this
particular craft, whose curved planks of its prow are shaped like a
mind."--Mary Ann Caw, Distinguished Professor of English, French,
and Comparative Literature, the Graduate School of the City
University of New York "[Bonnefoy] is a poet of small epiphanies:
some long-ago summer evening when the night forgot to fall while a
lone child played on the road and a distant voice kept calling him.
This is the secret of his lyricism, the memory of a fragment of
time touched by eternity that he cannot let go. Is this one
obsession enough for a lifetime of poetry? In a few of his finest
poems, Bonnefoy makes us believe that it is."--Charles Simic, "The
New York Review of Books
""Yves Bonnefoy is one of the rare poets in the history of
literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic
excellence throughout an entire lifetime--more than half a century
now, and still counting. These recent poems, superbly translated by
Hoyt Rogers, attest to his enduring greatness."--Paul Auster
"Yves Bonnefoy represents contemporary French poetry at its classic
best: sober and yet soaring, full of invocation and desire: 'Let
this world endure . . . Let this world remain.' This volume--thanks
to Hoyt Rogers, Richard Howard, and the input of Bonnefoy
himself--is a splendid celebration of the depths of this particular
craft, whose curved planks of its prow are shaped like a
mind."--Mary Ann Caw, Distinguished Professor of English, French,
and Comparative Literature, the Graduate School of the City
University of New York
"I have been deeply impressed, reading Hoyt Rogers's translations
of Yves Bonnefoy's "Les planches courbes." They are much more than
English versions of these strong and delicate originals--they are
re-creations that became distinct poems in our language, a true and
loving homage to their source."--Alastair Reid
""The Curved Planks" is the crowning achievement of a major French
poet who has much to say to our troubled times: Yves Bonnefoy
continues to explore the possibilities of hope, to assay the
significance of the here and now, to chronicle the dual 'presence'
of emptiness and plenitude. Hoyt Rogers has composed fluent,
engaging translations that reveal a profound respect for the
original poems--and for the man who wrote them."--John Taylor,
author of "Paths to Contemporary French Literature
"
"The first poetic associations of Bonnefoy, an octogenarian French
poet often mentioned in the same breath as Paul Valry, were with
the French surrealists, but he has long since been a maverick of
French verse, crafting stanzas as simple as they are resonant and
rooted in everything from modernism to medieval song. This
sequence, composed of short series of poems that take in every form
from prose to rhyme, centers, as Richard Howard notes in a baroque
preface, on renewal, taking the myth of Ceres as a point of origin:
'she still/ Stops at night / Under rustling trees, / And knocks at
closed doors.' Hoyt--who provides a long afterword, a translator's
note and a bibliography--offers a translation that is solid and
clear, and that allows for play among word and phrase senses: 'the
limitless space of clashing currents, of yawning abysses, of
stars.'"--"Publishers Weekly" Table of Contents
Foreword by Richard Howard
"LA PLUIE D'ETE
"SUMMER RAIN
"Les rainettes, le soir
"Tree Frogs, at Evening
I. "Rauques etaient les voix
"At evening, the tree frogs
II. "Its s'attardaient, le soir"
They lingered, at evening
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"La pluie d'ete
"Summer Rain I." Mais le plus cher
" Yet the dearest
II." Et tot apres le ciel
" And soon after, the sky
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"Les chemins
"The Paths
I. "Chemins, o beaux enfants
" Paths, O beautiful children II. "Et vite it nous menait
"And quickly he would lead us III." Ceres aurait bien du
"Ceres, all sweat and dust
"Hier, l'inachevable
"Yesterday, Without End
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"Une pierre
"A Stone
"Que ce monde demeure!
"Let This World End
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