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Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems
Rediscover Joyce Mansour, the most significant Surrealist poet to emerge from 1950s Paris.
“You know very well, Joyce, that you are for me—and very objectively too—the greatest poet of our time. Surrealist poetry, that’s you.”—André Breton
Joyce Mansour, a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt, was 25 years old when she published her first book in Paris in 1953. Her fierce, macabre, erotically charged works caught the eye of André Breton, who welcomed her into his Surrealist group and became her lifelong friend and ally. Despite her success in surrealist circles, her books received scant attention from the literary establishment, which is hardly surprising since Mansour's favorite topics happened to be two of society's greatest death and unfettered female desire.
Now, over half a century later, Mansour's time has come. Emerald Wounds collects her most important work, spanning the entire arc of her career, from the gothic, minimalist fragments of her first published work to the serpentine power of her poems of the 1980s. In fresh new translations, Mansour's voice surges forth uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society. Mansour is a poet the world needs today.
“You know very well, Joyce, that you are for me—and very objectively too—the greatest poet of our time. Surrealist poetry, that’s you.”—André Breton
Joyce Mansour, a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt, was 25 years old when she published her first book in Paris in 1953. Her fierce, macabre, erotically charged works caught the eye of André Breton, who welcomed her into his Surrealist group and became her lifelong friend and ally. Despite her success in surrealist circles, her books received scant attention from the literary establishment, which is hardly surprising since Mansour's favorite topics happened to be two of society's greatest death and unfettered female desire.
Now, over half a century later, Mansour's time has come. Emerald Wounds collects her most important work, spanning the entire arc of her career, from the gothic, minimalist fragments of her first published work to the serpentine power of her poems of the 1980s. In fresh new translations, Mansour's voice surges forth uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society. Mansour is a poet the world needs today.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 25, 2023
15 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Mansour
35 books97 followersJoyce Mansour was born Joyce Patricia Adès in Bowden, England to Jewish-Egyptian parents. After a month in Cheshire her parents returned with her to Cairo where she lived until she was twenty. Moving to Paris in 1953 she became one of the best known Surrealist poets, authoring sixteen books of poetry, as well as a number of important prose and theater pieces.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 7, 2023
Everything I hoped it would be after my initial exposure to Moorhouse’s translations of Monsour’s poems in the recent Poetry Magazine portfolio, published earlier this year.
Surreal, decadent, intensely sexual, dark (often macabre), and consistently musical; short lines set to the pulse of a fever dream. In other words, all my interests at once, in my preferred mode. Can’t recommend this highly enough.
If you’re curious, sample a few poems over at the Poetry Foundation site: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Surreal, decadent, intensely sexual, dark (often macabre), and consistently musical; short lines set to the pulse of a fever dream. In other words, all my interests at once, in my preferred mode. Can’t recommend this highly enough.
If you’re curious, sample a few poems over at the Poetry Foundation site: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
August 6, 2023
...to be a women, beauty is not enough, one must also know how to wait... to wait without pleasure for routine or for luck... one must learn to fool your ennui. To wait without seeming to...
November 25, 2025
Having bought this book from City Lights and started to read her work (which I had only ever read maybe one or two poems) I would now say that she is becoming of my favorite female poets...Dark, gothic, sexual, strange, powerful poems that are incredibly underrated...
December 21, 2025
The storm draws a silver line
In the sky
And bursts into a great viscous spasm
On the earth.
The floating foam
Surge of the ocean in disarray
Refreshes our undone faces
And our bodies hiding
In the dark warmth of our sleeping desires
Rear themselves.
Our nap hassled by sleep bugs
Ends
And the short lapping of the waves
On the beach where the sky dances
Is quiet, my love
And it's raining.
In the sky
And bursts into a great viscous spasm
On the earth.
The floating foam
Surge of the ocean in disarray
Refreshes our undone faces
And our bodies hiding
In the dark warmth of our sleeping desires
Rear themselves.
Our nap hassled by sleep bugs
Ends
And the short lapping of the waves
On the beach where the sky dances
Is quiet, my love
And it's raining.
November 17, 2023
An excellent book, well translated! Mansour is an outstanding poet and committed surrealist. A friend of Andre Breton and Ted Joans.
November 3, 2023
Absolutely fascinated with this woman’s poetry. 🖤
October 22, 2023
What I wrote (in part) about this collection on LitHub:
In one poem, titled by its first line “Fièvre ton sexe est un crabe”/“Fever your sex is a crab,” she writes (via Moorhouse):
Déchirent mes doigts de cuir
Arrachent mes pistons
Ma bouche court le long de ta ligne d’horizon
Voyageuse sans peur sur une mer de frénésie
Tear at my leather fingers
Snatch at my pistons
My mouth runs along your horizon
A traveler unafraid on a frenzied sea
This captures the edge-of-your-seat urgency of Mansour. The images are like hairpin turns that never cease. It’s novel, strange, thrilling. Moorhouse complicates the poem further when she explains “the crab often represent[s] the cancer that ended her mother’s life…In Mansour’s work, love and death are inseparable.” In Tamara Faith Berger’s excellent interview with Moorhouse at The Rumpus, Moorhouse explains what, exactly, seemed to drive the lack of notable interest in Mansour’s work in France, despite the fact she published over a dozen powerful poetry collections. “I use the word chauvinistic because I think that certain French literary elite have this very precise idea of what ‘French’ literature is, and what ‘great’ literature is,” says Moorhouse. “[W]omen were allowed to write for children.” I’m so grateful to Moorhouse for her helping bring this remarkable poet’s work to English readers, and help expand our knowledge of women writers throughout the world—helping buck against the historical chauvinism Mansour endured. I know my bookshelf will be better for it. “Her work is defiant; even by today’s standards, it smashes taboos around female expression and desire,” Moorhouse explains. “She is Baudelaire minus the shame.”
In one poem, titled by its first line “Fièvre ton sexe est un crabe”/“Fever your sex is a crab,” she writes (via Moorhouse):
Déchirent mes doigts de cuir
Arrachent mes pistons
Ma bouche court le long de ta ligne d’horizon
Voyageuse sans peur sur une mer de frénésie
Tear at my leather fingers
Snatch at my pistons
My mouth runs along your horizon
A traveler unafraid on a frenzied sea
This captures the edge-of-your-seat urgency of Mansour. The images are like hairpin turns that never cease. It’s novel, strange, thrilling. Moorhouse complicates the poem further when she explains “the crab often represent[s] the cancer that ended her mother’s life…In Mansour’s work, love and death are inseparable.” In Tamara Faith Berger’s excellent interview with Moorhouse at The Rumpus, Moorhouse explains what, exactly, seemed to drive the lack of notable interest in Mansour’s work in France, despite the fact she published over a dozen powerful poetry collections. “I use the word chauvinistic because I think that certain French literary elite have this very precise idea of what ‘French’ literature is, and what ‘great’ literature is,” says Moorhouse. “[W]omen were allowed to write for children.” I’m so grateful to Moorhouse for her helping bring this remarkable poet’s work to English readers, and help expand our knowledge of women writers throughout the world—helping buck against the historical chauvinism Mansour endured. I know my bookshelf will be better for it. “Her work is defiant; even by today’s standards, it smashes taboos around female expression and desire,” Moorhouse explains. “She is Baudelaire minus the shame.”
April 8, 2024
In this elegant translation, Emilie Moorhouse introduces English readers to the work of 20th-century poet Joyce Mansour. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a 1950s surrealist, but I found her poems urgent, provocative, and utterly readable.
Mansour asks us to look at what we so often look away from: women’s rage, the female body, the fury and frenzy of desire, darkness, death. Reading her, I was reminded that hatred and love are often two sides of the same coin, and that passion can be a destructive force, as can apathy and complacency.
There is something primal—but also weird and haunting—about her writing. Her imagery draws on descriptions of the earth and the natural world, the human body, and ancient myths and religions, and feels timeless as such. But Mansour can also strike a cheeky note, as in her poem “Practical Advice While You Wait,” and there is a dark, cynical sense of humour that runs through this collection.
I appreciated the biographical information/context in the translator's introduction. The works included were obviously chosen with care, and the way the poems are arranged allows readers to experience the progression and arc of her work. While I found her earlier poems to be a bit more accessible, her later poems demand a closer and more immersive read.
This is a must-read collection for anyone interested in 20th century poetry, surrealist or otherwise!
Mansour asks us to look at what we so often look away from: women’s rage, the female body, the fury and frenzy of desire, darkness, death. Reading her, I was reminded that hatred and love are often two sides of the same coin, and that passion can be a destructive force, as can apathy and complacency.
There is something primal—but also weird and haunting—about her writing. Her imagery draws on descriptions of the earth and the natural world, the human body, and ancient myths and religions, and feels timeless as such. But Mansour can also strike a cheeky note, as in her poem “Practical Advice While You Wait,” and there is a dark, cynical sense of humour that runs through this collection.
I appreciated the biographical information/context in the translator's introduction. The works included were obviously chosen with care, and the way the poems are arranged allows readers to experience the progression and arc of her work. While I found her earlier poems to be a bit more accessible, her later poems demand a closer and more immersive read.
This is a must-read collection for anyone interested in 20th century poetry, surrealist or otherwise!
January 20, 2026
I’ve spent the last couple of months getting caught up on back issues of Poetry magazine going back to 2022, and one of them had a feature on Joyce Mansour that caught my attention. Her imagery is textbook surrealism in a way that I previously only really encountered in visual art. There are bizarre, violent, and sometimes sexual images that push boundaries and offer multiple interpretations worth rereading.
From what I can tell, the translations prioritized imagery, so the English word equivalents seem to be a 1:1 match. The drawback of this is that French is far superior to English in sound, so some poems lose the alliteration, rhythm, and in some cases, rhyme of the original. Still, I think this worked because I’d rather visualize Mansour’s own ideas over a translator’s reimagining of them. I wish I knew more French!
From what I can tell, the translations prioritized imagery, so the English word equivalents seem to be a 1:1 match. The drawback of this is that French is far superior to English in sound, so some poems lose the alliteration, rhythm, and in some cases, rhyme of the original. Still, I think this worked because I’d rather visualize Mansour’s own ideas over a translator’s reimagining of them. I wish I knew more French!
February 23, 2026
I was interested to learn about the life and poetry of Joyce Mansour who I had not previously heard of. I especially appreciated the format of this book, side by side French with English translations. I think I would have appreciated reading this more fully 10 or 20 years ago, at an earlier stage in my own life when the primary subject matter of personal desire was more figural. Still, I hope Mansour’s writing will reach a larger audience as a result of this work.
December 31, 2023
Þessi ljóðabók er eitthvað annað og öðruvísi. Hún er heillandi, gotnesk, skrýtin, kynferðisleg og súrrealísk. Mansour er magnað skáld. Hún samdi ljóð sín á frönsku og var því ekki þekkt út fyrir landsteina Frakklands en í dag hefur áhugi á ljóðum hennar aukist verulega. Þessi ljóðabók er tvítyngd bæði á ensku og frönsku.
January 12, 2025
While I’ve loved Joyce Mansour’s work for a long time, I was disappointed that a book proclaiming to chart her career progress did not include basic section titles for each book selection. That led to an uneven reading experience without adequate breathing room or context.
March 2, 2025
Dark, weird, sensual. So different from anything I’ve ever read. Though I wasn’t prepared for how little I’d understand her writing; the surrealist style is intense so each piece warrants a few re-reads.
June 8, 2025
Retas radinys surasti tokią poetę, o ypač siurrealistę, kuri makabriškai ir erotiškai aprašo savo geidulius bei kančias. Stiprios eiles, nors vietomis labai sunku suvokti, kas vyksta, bet visomis prasmėmis inovatoriška.
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February 10, 2024Wonderful passionate prescient fem poetry, published in 1953. If you like Mansour, take a look at this Lithuanian female poet's work, published in 1952: https://newshoots.pub
December 9, 2024
A fever dream’s fever dream of desire. The voice is unlike Sappho’s, passionate, imperative, sensual, and yet simultaneously cold at times and withdrawn, fire burning on ice.
January 23, 2025
4 1/2 stars
March 26, 2025
chillingly beautiful and heartbreaking literature
November 29, 2025
this collection is so delightfully morbid and feral and alive! I would like to kiss Joyce mansour on the mouth as a thank you for all of her unfettered desire
February 10, 2026
the poems are so electric and truly sui generis but the translation is uninspired :((
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews