Selected Poems

by Yves Bonnefoy, Anthony Rudolf (Translator)

127p slim paperback with purple dustjacket, nice clean copy, very good indeed, first edition, this copy published in the year 1968 in the series entitled Cape Editions

Genres: Poetry, France

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Yves Bonnefoy (1923/6/24-2016/7/1) was a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher.

His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word. He also published a number of translations, most notably Shakespeare and published several works on art and art history, including Miró and Giacometti.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would be waiting, afraid, watching out for him,
Perhaps at last a door was open
[...]and I knew
Past and future would always destroy
Each other [...]
Like the sea and the sand on the shore,

And yet in him I would set up
The sad place of a song I carried
Like the shadow and the mud I made
Images of absence, when water
Came to cleanse the bitterness of shores.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

You no longer come into this garden,
The paths of suffering and aloneness vanish,
The grasses signify your dead face.

It does not matter to you any more
That the dark church is hidden in stone,
The dazzled face of a redder sun, in the trees,

For you it is enough
To take a long time dying as in sleep,
And now you do not even love the shadow you have
wed.

[steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

poems of memory, light, and ash. where language meets image and is polished instead of deafened.

"in the land of the word [...] I embrace you / in the act of knowing and naming."