Curtains, blinds, draperies, shades, no, nothing Madame, to conceal from your Cyclops' eye in the shadows from which it spies on me this long pale body, false corpse tired out with debauchery, which is swooning too before your balcony, with your drying stockings and scanties of a nun at bay - poisonous flowers for a lonely man whom death panics, draws erect, demarrows in the night, riveted to your white thighs. Readers who denounce most contemporary French poetry as self-referential experimentation, word games, exercises in deconstruction, or other kinds of incomprehensible writing disconnected from everyday life - brace yourselves for a revelation. Erotic and urbane, distinguished by formal skill yet marked by the subtlest shades of feeling, Guy Goffette's unabashedly lyrical poems pay homage to both Verlaine and Rimbaud, whom he counts as his important forebears, with echoes of Auden and Pound, Pavese and Borges. In "Charlestown Blues", poet and translator Marilyn Hacker has chosen a tightly thematic selection of Goffette's poems, all centering around the notion of "blue" - the color and the emotion, as well as that quintessentially American style of musical performance. Hacker's crystalline and musical English renderings will show Anglophones why Goffette is considered one of the most important poets writing in French today.

About the Author
Guy Goffette is the author of seven books of poems, including, most recently, L'adieu aux lisieres, as well as two novels and imaginative studies of poets and painters including Auden and Bonnard. He has had a long career as a teacher, literary critic, and editor at Editions Gallimard. Marilyn Hacker is a faculty member at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the City College of New York. She is the author of eleven books of poems, including Desesperanto and Essays on Departure, and of five collections of translations.

Reviews
"Guy Goffette is an heir to Verlaine. A poet who very courageously has decided to remain faithful to his own personal life, in its humblest moments. He keeps things simple, he is marvelously able to capture the emotions and desires common to us all. Goffette is without question one of the best poets of the present moment in France." - Yves Bonnefoy"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226300740
Author Guy Goffette
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 340g
Dimensions(mm) 22mm * 15mm * 2mm