A Few Microseconds on Earth

by Perrin Langda, Pauline Levy Valensi (Translator)

Translated by Pauline Levy Valensi. In this English debut, French poet Perrin Langda offers poems with equal parts surrealism and satire. Sex, global warming, video games, gentrification, and all the symptoms of late-stage capitalism are illuminated in Langda's microcosmic poems, composed in ecstatic flashes. Pauline Levy Valensi's skillful translation captures the irony and rhythm of these inventive lyrics, wherein "man emerges from mud / like a zombie and grills / the blood of the planet / which goes up in smoke." "An unusual, off-the-wall, merry, lively, eruptive, troubled but clear-sighted poetry, continuously in motion, geomorphic."--François-Xavier Farine "Langda's poems zoom in and out on temporal, digital, and emotional scales, flashing through exponentially infinite and infinitesimal temporalities. Yet Perrin's universe is in decay, his earth as blue as the rotting lemon in Joseph Beuys' 'Capri Batterie.' Pauline Levy Valensi voices these intricate miniatures in the elemental rhythms of punk rock."--Esther Allen Poetry.

74 pages, Paperback

Published December 10, 2019