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Reviews / Votes

This exciting new collection, the first of its kind to introduce a powerful selection of contemporary French poetry by women to an anglophone audience, is much more than an anthology. Martin Sorrell presents the question of gender and universality in poetry in a dialogue of feminine/feministe voices, both well-known poets such as Chedid, Hyvrard and Yourcenar and their company of lesser-known sisters. His sensitive introduction and translations, which above all seek to respect and do justice to the tongue of each woman poet, take full account of the question, 'Could and should a man translate and publish a selection he had made of women's poems? Sorrell's response is the very unencapsulating mode of both his selection, the way in which he sets his translation alongside the original poem in the context of her viewpoint on herself and poet and on poetry, and the listening quality of his translation Jacqueline Chenieux-Gendron's afterword pinpoints the diversity of these poets, but their common voice, the touch of women's tongues, is sure and tender. But so, too, as this book clearly demonstrates, may be the voice of the translator a la Sorrell(e). This book, then, sets new and high standard for poetry anthologies and translations of poetry. * Forum for Modern Language Studies * (The) strategy of identifying a strong semantic line and building the translation round it is inevitably selective but here it produces English texts that work as poems in their own right. It is the bilingual reader, however, who has most to gain: moving back and forth between versions, one begins to understand the choices (semantic, tonal, rhythmic) made by the translator, which in turn illuminate and enrich one's reading of the original. At its best, as here, this type of translation is as analytical as any literary commentary. * Modern Language Review *