The Curved Planks Poems

For decades readers and critics have acclaimed Yves Bonnefoy as France's greatest living poet. His most recent book of verse,The Curved Planks, crowns an oeuvre that has won him the highest international honors. More than any other single work, this sequence embodies the astonishing variety of Bonnefoy's art. A rich fabric of themes, styles, and genres, it balances aesthetic complexity with heartfelt directness. This bilingual edition ofThe Curved Plankssets the French texts alongside English versions by the noted translator Hoyt Rogers, who has collaborated closely with Bonnefoy in crafting poems that re-create the freshness and vision of the originals. This volume also includes a preface by the renowned poet and critic Richard Howard and essays by the translator that situateThe Curved Planksin the author's body of work. All assist in introducing the English-language reader to Bonnefoy's profound poetic gift. Yves Bonnefoyhas published seven major poetry collections, numerous studies of literature and art, and an extensive dictionary of mythology. His work has been translated into many languages, and he is a celebrated translator of Shakespeare and Yeats. He lives in Paris. Hoyt Rogerstranslates poetry and other literary works from the French, German, and Spanish. He is also the author of a book of poems,Witnesses, and a volume of criticism,The Poetics of Inconstancy. He lives in the Dominican Republic. For decades readers and critics have acclaimed Yves Bonnefoy as France's greatest living poet. His most recent book of verse,The Curved Planks, crowns an oeuvre that has won him the highest international honors. More than any other single work, this sequence embodies the astonishing variety of Bonnefoy's art. A rich fabric of themes, styles, and genres, it balances aesthetic complexity with heartfelt directness. This bilingual edition ofThe Curved Plankssets the French text alongside English versions by the noted translator Hoyt Rogers, who has collaborated closely with Bonnefoy in crafting poems that re-create the freshness and vision of the originals. This volume also includes a foreword by the renowned poet and critic Richard Howard and two comprehensive essays by the translator; all assist in introducing the English-language readers to Bonnefoy's profound poetic gift. "Yves Bonnefoy represents contemporary French poetry at its classic best: sober and yet soaring, full of invocation and desire: 'Let this world endure . . . Let this world remain.' This volume--thanks to Hoyt Rogers, Richard Howard, and the input of Bonnefoy himself--is a splendid celebration of the depths of this particular craft, whose curved planks of its prow are shaped like a mind."--Mary Ann Caw, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, the Graduate School of the City University of New York "[Bonnefoy] is a poet of small epiphanies: some long-ago summer evening when the night forgot to fall while a lone child played on the road and a distant voice kept calling him. This is the secret of his lyricism, the memory of a fragment of time touched by eternity that he cannot let go. Is this one obsession enough for a lifetime of poetry? In a few of his finest poems, Bonnefoy makes us believe that it is."--Charles Simic,The New York Review of Books "Yves Bonnefoy is one of the rare poets in the history of literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic excellence throughout an entire lifetime--more than half a century now, and still counting. These recent poems, superbly translated by Hoyt Rogers, attest to his enduring greatness.Paul Auster

Yves Bonnefoy has published numerous studies of literature and art, as well as an extensive dictionary of mythology. His work has been translated into many languages, and he is a celebrated translator of Shakespeare and Yeats. He lives in Paris.

"Yves Bonnefoy is one of the rare poets in the history of literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic excellence throughout an entire lifetime--more than half a century now, and still counting. These recent poems, superbly translated by Hoyt Rogers, attest to his enduring greatness." --Paul Auster

"I have been deeply impressed, reading Hoyt Rogers' translations of Yves Bonnefoy's Les Planches Courbes. They are much more than English versions of these strong and delicate originals--they are recreations that become distinct poems in English, a true and loving homage to their source." --Alastair Reid