An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.
Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchor's Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy's earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical-but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life's eternal questions with each new poem.
Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem's meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy's powerful, discursive poetry.
An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.
Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchor's Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy's earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical-but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life's eternal questions with each new poem.
Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem's meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy's powerful, discursive poetry.
Translator's Acknowledgements
The Disorder
The Anchor's Long Chain (Ales Stenar)
America
Child's Play
Child's Play
The Long Name
The Trees
Mouth Agape
The Painter Whose Name is the Snow
The Divine Names
Passerby, Do You Want To Know?
Almost Nineteen Sonnets
Tomb of L.-B. Alberti
Tomb of Charles Baudelaire
'Facesti come quei che va di notte...'
The Mocking of Ceres
The Tree on Rue Descartes
The Invention of the Flute with Seven Pipes
Tomb of Giacomo Leopardi
Mahler, the Song of the Earth
Tomb of Stéphane Mallarmé
To the Author of 'The Night'
San Giorgio Maggiore
On Three Paintings by Poussin
Ulysses Sails Past Ithaca
San Biagio, at Montepulciano
A God
A Poet
A Stone
Tomb of Paul Verlaine
One of Wordsworth's Childhood Memories
Remarks on the Horizon
On Leaving the Garden: A Variation
Another Variation
Yves Bonnefoy is a poet, critic, and professor emeritus of comparative poetics at the Collège de France. In addition to poetry and literary criticism, he has published numerous works of art history and translated into French several of Shakespeare’s plays. Beverley Bie Brahic is an award-winning poet and translator. A Canadian, she lives in Paris and Stanford, California.
“There is a folkloric feel to this writing. As if life is a
fairytale. The tone is theistic, and there’s always a narrative
within the surreal. Yes, all this is Bonnefoy. His prose
pieces are sharp and clear while there are transgressions folding
dreams within reality.”
*Washington Independent Review of Books*
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