The Recitation of Forgetting

by Franck André Jamme

Poetry. Translation. French author Franck Andre Jamme is the author of ten volumes of poetry.THE RECITATION OF FORGETTING , translated by John Ashbery, is his first book-length appearance in English. "The semitones have deserted us, that were near. Each color has made itself strong, twice pure, as though born of itself. She said, 'Look, blood is flowing, you dip your finger in it, you sense the syllables as they pass, skull then arm then finally hand, yes, the eye sees, but most of all it illuminates, it is light as much as daylight is.' The world, unforgivable." Jamme is also the editor of Rene Char's complete works and an independent art curator. A chapbook of his work, EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A BEETLE, previously published by Black Square Editions, is also available from SPD.

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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.

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I liked in 2004. I found it in August. That means it took me close to 8 months to like something and I'll tell you it was kind of worth the wait.