Another Silent Attack

by Franck André Jamme

Poetry. Translated from the French by Michael Tweed. Each of these seven prose poems ends with a gridlike block of capital letters, a phrase that looks back at its source, the text that precedes it. Looking back, in the form of the past tense, and the problem of navigating the miscellany that is pulled from the past, seem to be important throughout this book. "Some sentences had, behind them, hidden, peacocks." The grid of language is at once organized into sentences, questions and dialogue, and also difficult to see, because everything is there. "Everything existed. Even speech." French poet Franck Andre Jamme is the author of thirteen books of poetry since 1981, and in 2005 was awarded the Grand Prix de Poesie de la Societe des Gens de Letres for his life's work. Translator Michael Tweed is a writer as well as a visual artist.

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Franck André Jamme has published fifteen books of poems and fragments since 1981, as well as numerous illustrated books (with Jaume Plensa, James Brown, Zao Wou Ki, Marc Couturier, Suzan Frecon, Yang Jie Chang, Olivier Debre, Acharya Vyakul, Philippe Favier). He has been praised by Edmond Jabes, Henri Michaux and René Char (whose Complete Works he has edited in La Pléiade), and has been translated by John Ashbery. He is also a specialist and curator of contemporary Indian Tantric, Brut and tribal arts (for Magiciens de la terre at Centre Pompidou, Fondation Cartier and Galerie du Jour/Agnes b., Paris, the CCA and Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, Feature Gallery, The Drawing Center and Lawrence Markey Gallery, NYC). He has published numerous works in the United States, including Moon Wood (Selavy Press, 2000); Extracts from the Life of a Beetle (Black Square, 2000); The Recitation of Forgetting (Black Square, 2003); Another Silent Attack (Black Square/Brooklyn Rail, 2006); New Exercises (Wave Books, 2008). He is one of the authors of The Yale Book of French Poetry, 2004. For his life work, he received in 2005 the Grand Prix de Poesie de la Societe des Gens de Lettres. He lives in Paris and Burgundy.