[New-Poetry] French poets: self-indulgent list of ice-creamflavors

[Anny Ballardini]

I know Alexander won't like it:
Baudelaire.

From: "TheOldMole" <tad at opus40.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 6:26 AM


> Prevert?
>
> From: "Alexander Dickow" <alexdickow9 at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 8:52 PM
>
>
>> "Alex, thanks for that background to the quote...
>> Who are the French poets most important to you
>> be they barbaric and wild or tame and bourgeois?"
>>
>> Finnegan,
>> There are lots of good ones. Me personally? See
>> Corbiere, Max Jacob, Damas and Guillevic, below.
>> Caveat: I am entirely aware that this entire list is
>> composed of white men with the exception of Damas, all
>> from the late 19th- and 20th-c (gotta stop somewhere).
>> Most of them are also dead (more recent poets tend to
>> be tough to find in translation, to say the least).
>> I'd be the first to deplore the backwardness of the
>> French, and although I'm sure Cesaire and Senghor are
>> amazing, they've never much appealed to me. I wish I
>> knew Andree Chedid's work better, as what I've read of
>> it is lovely (fabulous political poet, too, one of the
>> best), but the fact is the women are simply few and
>> far between, for various (all of them silly) reasons.
>> Anyway, it's not my fault, I swear. I've tried to
>> exclude most of the really obvious ones (Apollinaire,
>> Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Baudelaire, Lautreamont,
>> Reverdy, Jules Supervielle...).
>> Second note: if you dislike peremptory judgments, this
>> might bother you. But _I_ had loads of fun playing
>> judge/jury/executioner, at least.
>>
>> Max Jacob (of the underfamous Dice Cup, translated --
>> now unfindable -- into English by Ashbery, admired by
>> O'Hara and the NYClub among others, but he wrote all
>> kinds of wonderful and vary diff. things)
>>
>> Tristan Corbiere -- incredibly, mind-bogglingly
>> under-rated virtulently anti-romantic breton poet
>> c1873 (same date of pub. as Rimbaud's Season -- but
>> even *better* if you ask me!), recently re-translated
>> into English under the title _Wry-Blue Loves_ in what
>> looks like a very talented trans. (I only got a quick
>> glimpse of it, unfortunately). Admired, back in the
>> day, by Eliot, Corbiere's first translator...
>>
>> Leon Gontran Damas -- the most under-read, and in my
>> opinion by far the most compelling, of the three
>> Negritude poets (Cesaire, Senghor, and Damas). I've
>> unfortunately not yet read all of Pigments, but the
>> few pieces I'm acquainted with are among my favorite
>> poems in the language.
>>
>> Eugene Guillevic -- my personal favorite minimalist
>> poet: sort of the French Creeley, if you will. Try
>> _Sphere_ or _Carnac_, they're my favorites.
>>
>> Contemporary poets, generally not translated (or very
>> little): I'd recommend Philippe Beck, Jean-Claude
>> Pinson, James Sacre, David Christoffel, Henri Droguet,
>> Jacques Demarq, Jacques Roubaud and a few others. Some
>> of these recent poets I've discussed on my blog once
>> or twice. Try Duration Press or Double Change, they
>> might have some.
>>
>> Poets I don't care for: Bonnefoy's over-rated, much
>> too _solemn_. Rimbaud's been so terribly overdone, and
>> over-mythified, argh! He was a punk, then he was a
>> gun-runner. Verlaine's *okay*, I guess. Hugo: pompous,
>> often in bad taste, but hard to avoid. Leconte de
>> Lisle: overblown, never uses a noun w/o a qualifier.
>>
>> French-English bilingual poets: see Taking the Brim, a
>> blog of mostly canadian writers, plus R. Federman and
>> P. Joris, of course.
>>
>> Couple of other good names to remember: Rene Char,
>> Edmond Jabes, Geo Norge, Henri Michaux, Jean Tardieu,
>> Paul-Jean Toulet. Gee, there are so many
>> others...can't stop, help!
>>
>> Happy reading! Questions welcome.
>> Amicalement,
>> Alex
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> www.alexdickow.net/blog/
>>
>>  les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
>>  merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet
>>