Paris Notebook

by Tereza Riedlbauchová, Stephan Delbos (Translator)

Paris Notebook is the lyrical record of a poet’s quest for human unity and wholeness. Tereza Riedlbauchová’s intensely passionate poems explore the thresholds and ruptures of bodies and the boundaries between the physical world and the imagination. The desire to pass beyond these borders and emerge elsewhere, or to merge with an- other living being, animates deceptively spontaneous poems evok- ing moments of physical and emotional intercourse while seamlessly shifting between different perspectives and settings.

Riedlbauchová wrote Paris Notebook between 2008 and 2012 when she was living mostly in Paris, but these poems are not confined to the French capital. Barcelona, Île de Ré, Normandy, Plovdiv, Rome, Prague, and rural areas of the Czech Republic are all visited. This pan-European scope adds a deep and varied sense of place to the collection while also articulating Riedlbauchová’s transnational poetics.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jason Mashak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riedlbachova is a medium observing and describing two realities (one may be a straight jacket, and she is perfectly at peace with this). She's the ghost of a poet, haunting her own spaces, places she has inhabited but are unfamiliar to her. Riedlbachova is clearly a granddaughter of Devětsil, conjured by the group one night to impress some Parisian guests to Czech lands. Splendid translation by Stephan Delbos, as never once did it feel like a translation. Also, I was able to kill two illiterate mosquitoes with this book in a span of 10 minutes. JM

[Stephan Delbos · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a reader and as a translator, I admire these poems for their lightly handled lyricism and their scope, which is both intensely intimate and fearlessly transnational. The seemingly spontane- ous nature of Paris Notebook amplifies the resonance and wonder of Riedlbauchová’s artistic and emotional perceptions. These are works of nonchalant, yet absolute, engagement with the poet’s inner world and the world around her.

[Ba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Krásná sbirka...šikovné obrazy s lehkým dotykem. Vím, že se na to vrátím znova a znova