Biographies of poets are often rich in human interest; manuals of literary history can be full of broad insight and suggestive parallels. But it is all too easy to let the study of French poetry drift towards lives, loves and -isms and away from the appreciation of its supremely creative use of language. Born of the belief that the proper study of poetry is the poem itself, this book seeks to concentrate on the poetic process at work on the page. Its aim is to encourage the student and the general reader to penetrate the textual richness of modern French verse where verbal artistry combines so powerfully with imaginative vision. The full introduction deals with such questions as metre and rhythm, uses of verse-form, sonority, imagery and structure, studying them not in the abstract but in particular, 'living' contexts. This leads on to detailed commentaries on individual poems illustrating, after the consideration of the problems of reading poetry in general, how one might approach poems as artistic unities in their own right. These guided commentaries are essentially an invitation to the reader to explore certain paths into the poem for himself. They do not provide a wrapped, sealed and delivered explanation; they call for and depend upon the reader's active involvement. Both the illustrations of the introduction and the commentary texts are taken from the fourteen poets who feature in the companion volume to this work, An Anthology of Modern French Poetry. In this way a complete overlap is created, and one is invited to pass from preliminary exercises in appreciation into the wider, more stimulating world of a fully balanced anthology.

This anthology is the companion volume to The Appreciation of Modern French Poetry, the aim of which was to give detailed preliminary help with the problems of poetic appreciation. The fourteen poets represented here provide a varied and exciting introduction to what is probably the richest century of French poetry, from 1850 to 1950. Hugo, the colossus of the nineteenth century, whose work gives new resonance and vitality to imaginative vision, opens the anthology, and Michaux, the most individual and 'modern' of twentieth-century poets in that he bridges the gap between poetry and contemporary science, closes it. Almost all the major poets of the period are included: Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Laforgue from the second half of the nineteenth century; Valery, Apollinaire, Supervielle and Eluard in the twentieth. The lesser known Cros and Desnos, fresh and spontaneous poets with an immediate appeal, invite a new look at the lyric traditions of french verse and offer an attractive new avenue for study. The choice of poems, dictated above all by their individual poetic value, reflects also the trends of recent criticism and the tastes of present-day readers. The texts are all accompanied by full notes, which not only explain local difficulties of vocabulary, syntax and expression, but lead the reader directly into the heart of the richness of theme, style and interpretation. These will prove of value not only to the student who is grappling with the basics of french verse, or is anxious to give depth to his familiarity, but to the general reader seeking to rekindle his enjoyment of French poetry. In addition, there are introductions to each poet summarizing the essence of his art, useful suggestions for further reading, and groups of dicussion topics to stimulate comparative insights and a wider responsiveness.

Parallel French/English texts. Michaux is one of the notable travellers of modern French poetry; not only to the Amazon and the Far East, but into the strange hinterland of his own inner space. Fired by the same explorer's appetite, he has delved into the realm of mescaline and other drugs, and his wartime poetry, part of a private 'resistance' movement of extraordinary density and energy, has advertised his view of the poetic act as a form of exorcism.