The curved planks

by Yves Bonnefoy

Hardcover, 2006

Status

Available

Tags

Publication

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

Description

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 ofThe 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 situateThe Curved Planks in the author's body of work. All assist in introducing the English-language reader to Bonnefoy's profound poetic gift.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member yigruzeltil
My first Bonnefoy, probably not the Bonnefoy I should have started with. I honestly came in expecting some subtle modernism - and, well, experienced plenty of subtleties (I am sure some of them have slipped by me), but the modernist part was rather thin. For a poet that comes after Surrealism,
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Bonnefoy comes across as remarkably backwards-stepping and it is only the remarkable atmosphere from some poems that redeem this mishmash of rather different poems. "La voix lointaine" is the cycle that gets closest to my expectations; on the other end of the spectrum, "L'encore aveugle" made me wonder at times why did I bother to read this (let aside the musicality, which is the thing Bonnefoy seems to excel in)... The last cycle is not so bad, but it makes me want to return to Ponge. (Why was such a feeble book released from the very beginning in the NRF Poésie Gallimard collection? Oh, because Bonnefoy is a "no-risk winner" choice by now... I guess the best things French poetry can offer nowadays are (as usual?) far from the "establishment"...)
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Language

Original language

French

Barcode

7428
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