Last Verses
Will be published approx. on 1. October 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-1-890650-54-4 (ISBN)
Description
The Last Verses of Jules Laforgue is the first full-length collection of free verse published in the French language and, in many ways, it remains far in advance of any free verse innovations conjured in the past one hundred years and more. Laforgue, in his famous Complaints and Harlequinades, was a profound influence upon such Modernist poets as Eliot and Pound. Yet in his Last Verses he set a precedent which no one as yet has managed to emulate or to advance. Why should this be? Simply put, Last Verses does not reject poetic formalism but, rather, projects it into uncharted and unvoiced regions of spiritual and sexual extremity. The freedom of these poems rests entirely in the purity of their despair, a purity not to be measured by any extant means. This music is made by no instrument but itself. This music is made on the farther shore of death.
Reviews / Votes
"This is an outstanding translation. Revell renders the French in just the right idiomatic language." --Marjorie Perloff on The Self-Dismembered Man and Alcools: Poems "Contemporary poet Donald Revell gives us a vivid and vibrant interpretation of Apollinaire's masterpiece." -- Virginia Quarterly Review on The Self-Dismembered Man and Alcools: Poems "Woe to those readers who are doomed to read Rimbaud only in French, for in addition to giving us a bracing translation of Une Saison En Enfer , Donald Revell has given birth to a great poem." -- James Longenbach on A Season in Hell "He brings to his Rimbaldian projects an enviable range of knowledge, as well as a warm attachment to the work and a strong technique." --Fred Chappell, Asheville Poetry Review v.17 #1 on A Season in Hell "[ Last Verses ] provides a new translation of what many consider the first free verse poetry in French, rendered beautifully by American poet and translator Revell." -- Publishers Weekly (June 27, 2011)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Richmond, CA
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
159 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-890650-54-4 (9781890650544)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification