Selected poems [of] Guillevic (Penguin modern European poets)

Literature & Fiction

Guillevic, Eugène

Poetry

Penguin

Product Description This bilingual collection of Eugene Guillevic's work, chosen from six of his books published between 1942 and 1966, and translated by the poet Denise Levertov, introduces American readers to a highly-acclaimed French poet. Guillevic was born in Carnac in 1907 of peasant stock. He sees the profoundly austere Breton landscapes (and all else in life) not as incidental backgrounds, but as elemental, living presences. His poems embody his indignation at the use and misuse of some human beings by others--as well as his cold and clear understanding of historical process. Like William Carlos Williams, he has a sharp eye, and as Miss Levertov points out in her introduction, "the simplicity of diction, the plain and hard meaning of things without descriptive qualification, reverberates, in the highly charged condensation of Guillevic's poems, with the ambiguity, the unfathomable mystery of natural objects." In translating these poems, Denise Levertov has drawn upon the affinity that exists between her own style and Guillevic's. She has attained comparable effects of concision and clarity and has reproduced with great subtlety the characteristic rhythm and cadence patterns of the French originals. Review "Guillevic's verse is lean and spare. Here lives a poetry of hard rock and dark waters, rendered in accessible English by a gifted translator able to preserve the music and meaning of the original." --Library Journal"Raw telegraphic stanzas sent into things until they withdraw from their deep entering of the world; they contain the odor of roots, the granular jagged damp feel of thought that has gone down to the bottom and returned stripped of everything but truth." --James Atlas, Poetry Magazine

Guillevic: Selected Poems

New Directions Publishing Corporation

Euclidians

Unicorn Press

Eugene Guillevic, who died in 1997, was one of France's most important contemporary poets. Dating from 1961, Carnac marks the beginning of Guillevic's mature life as a poet. A single poem divided into several parts, it evokes the rocky, sea-bound, unfinished landscape of Brittany with its sacred objects and its great silent sense of waiting. The texts are brief but have a grave, meditative serenity, as the poet seeks to effect balance and help us ""to make friends with nature,"" as well as to live in a universe which is chaotic and often frightening. In this poetry of description-where entire landscapes are built up from short, intense texts-language is reduced to its essentials, as words are placed on the page ""like a dam against time."" ""the book is a terrific existentialist document of its time, and still has much to tell us.""-Publishers Weekly ""Flinty and sparse and full of tensile strength, Guillevic's French is well matched by Montague's strong and sensuous English.""-Booklist ""A fine translation of a beguilingly simple work.""-Kirkus

Carnac (Bloodaxe Contemporary French Poets)

Bloodaxe Books

Vivre en Poesie, a series of interviews with Guillevic, was published in 1980. Guillevic was one of France's finest contemporary poets and his life spans the greater part of the twentieth century (1907-1997). The book contains, then, not only revelations about this great poet's work and working methods but also documents on twentieth century history as lived by one sensitive individual. He experienced early poverty in Brittany, the hardship and terror that was the people's lot in Paris during World War II, the intricacies of work as a civil servant and friendship with so many artists and writers of the century. The poems included have been translated by the late Denise Levertov.

Living in Poetry: Interviews With Guillevic (The Poet in Person, No. 1)

Dedalus Pr

"C'est bien un homme qui, à travers l'objet, parle ici à d'autres hommes et, bien sûr, puisqu'il s'agit d'un poète, c'est par le langage, dans le langage, qu'il se parle et nous parle ; mais enfin il parle, et le langage, auquel un rôle privilégié n'en est pas moins attribué, n'est pas seul, cela, je ne crois pas que Guillevic l'ait jamais cru, à parler. Loin d'exiler le texte indéchiffrable du monde et, sans communication avec lui, de se renclore en eux-mêmes, ces mots, ce langage s'en prennent au monde, ils l'interrogent, ils le somment ; interrogation, constat, ou amorce déjà d'une réponse, ils sont à la fois instrument de connaissance et exorcisme, savoir, élucidation, presque toucher, armes patientes du courage : Les mots, C'est pour savoir. Quand tu regardes l'arbre et dis le mot : tissu, Tu crois savoir et toucher même Ce qui s'y fait (...) Et la peur Est presque partie. (Exécutoire) Tel est bien, pour Guillevic, l'art poétique essentiel. Tel est l'acte poétique lui-même. Les mots sont savoir ; par là-même, ils sont aussi assurance, protection ; et l'homme sans eux nu, livré, exposé : aux choses, aux monstres, aux forces mauvaises, en lui et hors de lui, à la double et constante menace de l'en dehors et de l'intériorité." Jacques Borel.

Terraqué / Exécutoire

Gallimard]

Possibles futurs

History & Criticism

Poèmes

GALLIMARD JEUNE

Art poétique

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Books by Guillevic, Eugène