An inspiring book of poetry and prose by the celebrated author Yves Bonnefoy. Heralded as one of France’s greatest poets, Yves Bonnefoy has been dazzling readers since the publication of his first book in 1953. He remains influential and relevant, continuing to compose groundbreaking new work. Though Bonnefoy recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, many are calling these past two decades his most impressive yet. His latest book of poetry and prose, The Digamma, fits wonderfully into his impressive oeuvre, offering his signature style of simple but powerful language with fresh new grace. A key passage of the title piece of the book depicts the figures of Nicolas Poussin’s The Shepherds of Arcadia, which Bonnefoy has identified as crucial to the artist’s evolution. The sustained reference to Poussin’s iconography serves to ground the text in the lost civilizations of antiquity. Subtly, it brings out the underlying theme of the entire collection—in the ambivalent world we inhabit, being and non-being is fundamentally one. As a leading translator of Shakespeare in France, Bonnefoy’s fascination with the master playwright is displayed in “God in Hamlet� and “For a Staging of Othello,� two poems in prose that belong to an ongoing series of meditations on the plays. The collection also includes haunting reflections on children, nature, the origins of art, and vanished cultures.

A career retrospective of poetry and prose works by one of the under-recognized giants of French literature Andre du Bouchet, a great innovator of twentieth-century letters, has yet to be fully recognized by a wide circle of international readers. This inviting volume sets out to remedy the oversight, introducing a selection of du Bouchet's poetry and prose to English-language readers through the brilliant translations of Paul Auster and Hoyt Rogers. Openwork showcases pieces from the author's entire trajectory, beginning with little-known pieces from the 1950s, followed by major poems from the 1960s, and concluding with works written or rewritten in the poet's later decades. Throughout his life, du Bouchet devoted himself to long walks in his beloved French countryside, jotting down entries in notebooks as he rambled. These notebooks-more than one hundred all together-have emerged as signal works in their own right, and their musings are well represented in this anthology.

Yves Bonnefoy’s final poetic work, a collection of reflections about poetry, legacy, and life. The international community of letters mourned the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of France’s greatest poets of the last half-century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi. Together Still is his final poetic work, composed just months before his death. The book is nothing short of a literary testament, addressed to his wife, his daughter, his friends, and his readers throughout the world. In these pages, he ruminates on his legacy to future generations, his insistence on living in the present, his belief in the triumphant lessons of beauty, and, above all, his courageous identification of poetry with hope.

The first English translation of Yves Bonnefoy’s account of his life as a traveler.   The Wandering Life is a poetic culmination of Yves Bonnefoy’s wanderings and characterizes the final twenty-five years of his work. Bonnefoy was an ardent traveler throughout his life, and his journeys in foreign countries left a profound imprint on his work. The time he spent in Italy, translating Shakespeare’s work in England, in universities in the United States, in India with Octavio Paz, and more, affected his poetry in discernible ways and inspired The Wandering Life. Interweaving verse and prose—vignettes that range from a few lines in length to several pages—this volume is a fitting capstone to Bonnefoy’s oeuvre and appears in English translation for the first time to mark the centenary of Yves Bonnefoy’s birth.  

The international community of letters mourns the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of France's greatest poets of the last half-century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi.Together Still is his final poetic work, composed just months before his death. The book is nothing short of a literary testament, addressed to his wife, his daughter, his friends, and his readers throughout the world. In these pages, he ruminates on his legacy to future generations, his insistence on living in the present, his belief in the triumphant lessons of beauty, and, above all, his courageous identification of poetry with hope.

Velazquez. Poussin. Carvaggio. Bernini. Despite their disparate backgrounds, these greats of European Baroque art converged at one remarkable place in time: Rome, 1630. In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church turned to these masters of Baroque art to craft works celebrating the glories of the heavens manifested on earth. And so, with glittering monuments like Bernini's imposing bronze columns in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, 1630 came to be the crossroads of seventeenth-century art, religion, and power. In Rome, 1630, the renowned French poet and critic Yves Bonnefoy devotes his attention to this single year in the Baroque period in European art. Richly illustrated with artwork that reveals the unique, yet instructive, place of Rome in 1630 in European art history, Bonnefoy dives deep into this transformative movement. The inclusion of five additional essays on seventeenth-century art situate Bonnefoy's analysis within a lively debate on Baroque art and art history. Translator Hoyt Rogers's afterword pays homage to the author himself, situating Rome, 1630 in Bonnefoy's productive career as a premier French poet and critic.

A bestseller in France and winner of the Prix Renaudot, Grey Souls is a mesmerising and atmospheric tale of three mysterious deaths in an oddly isolated French village during World War I. The placid daily life of a small town near the front seems impervious to the nearby pounding of artillery fire and the parade of wounded strangers passing through its streets. But the illusion of calm is soon shattered by the deaths of three innocents - the charming new schoolmistress who captures every male heart only to kill herself; an angelic ten-year-old girl who is found strangled; and a local policeman's cherished wife, who dies alone in labour while her husband is hunting the murderer. Twenty years later, the policeman still struggles to make sense of these tragedies, a struggle that both torments and sustains him. But excavating the town's secret history will bring neither peace to him nor justice to the wicked.

Heralded as one of France's greatest poets, Yves Bonnefoy has been dazzling readers since the publication of his first book in 1953. He remains influential and relevant, continuing to compose groundbreaking new work. Though Bonnefoy recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, many are calling these past two decades his most impressive yet. His latest book of poetry and prose, The Digamma, fits wonderfully into his impressive oeuvre, offering his signature style of simplistic but powerful language with fresh new grace. A key passage of the title piece of the book depicts the figures of Nicolas Poussin's The Shepherds of Arcadia, which Bonnefoy has identified as crucial to the artist's evolution. The sustained reference to Poussin's iconography serves to ground the text in the lost civilizations of antiquity. Subtly, it brings out the underlying theme of the entire collection-in the ambivalent world we inhabit, being and nonbeing is fundamentally one. As a leading translator of Shakespeare in France, Bonnefoy's fascination with the master playwright is displayed in "God in Hamlet" and "For a Staging of Othello," two poems in prose which belong to an ongoing series of meditations on the plays. The collection also includes haunting reflections on children, nature, the origins of art, and vanished cultures.

This work identifies a distinctive poetics of inconsistency that came to the fore at the end of the 16th century and pervaded the love verse of the age. The book takes as its departure the poet Etienne Durand, identifying the theme of universal change as a hallmark of his contemporaries.