Selected poems

Represents the best of Irish poet Derek Mahon's five principal volumes, from "Night-Crossing" (1968) to "The Hunt By Night" (1982), and collects his more recent work, including "Antarctica" (1985).

Selected Poems

Literature & Fiction

Jaccottet, Philippe

Poetry

VIKING

'I have now given shape, though clumsily--so clumsily that, in the past, I would not have divulged them like this--to these pages begun immediately after the 21st of April, 2001, and dragged around like a burden for three years, the burden of an unsatisfactory draft, of an unfulfilled promise. Now published, despite everything, because of the impulse of friendship that they originally signified; and because of what they wanted to say and say again, before I will assuredly no longer be able to do so.'--Philippe Jaccottet Philippe Jaccottet is the prize-winning, Swiss-born French poet who, in 2014, became only the third poet (after René Char and St. John Perse) to enter Gallimard's Pléiade list while still living and working. "Truinas, April 21, 2001" is Jaccottet's meditation on his long friendship with another essential French poet, André du Bouchet (1924-2001), provoked by Du Bouchet's funeral -- 'an event that evokes memories of their first meeting a half-century earlier, their literary affinities (notably their common literary admiration for the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin), the particularly vivid perceptions of the natural surroundings of Du Bouchet's house in the south of France, and, not least, the doubts--scruples--about the very possibility of writing truly and honestly about death.' -- John Taylor

Truinas: April 21, 2001

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Odd Volumes

Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of Switzerlands’s most prominent and prolific men of letters, Jaccottet has published more than a dozen books of poetry and criticism, but none are widely available in English. Seedtime—Jaccottet’s notebooks—is an especially good introduction to this leading francophone Swiss author, containing the poet’s observations of the natural world and his reflections on literature, art, music, and the human condition. In these explorations, he returns again and again to the fundamental, focusing his prodigious talents on describing the exact shade of light on a meadow, the sound of running water, the color of cherry and almond blossoms, or the cry of a bird in the stillness before dawn. In this translation by Tess Lewis, English readers will finally be able to join this poet as we follow in his footsteps of fifty years ago and find the still-viable seeds of his delicate and tenacious verse.

Seedtime: Notebooks, 1954-79 (The Swiss List)

History & Criticism

Seagull Books

In The Pilgrim’s Bowl, Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet meditates on the work of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi and its power to evoke a complexity of emotions and astonishment. Jaccottet examines Morandi’s ascetic still lifes, contrasting his artistic approach to the life philosophies of two authors whom he cherished, Pascal and Leopardi, and reflecting on the few known autobiographical details we know about Morandi. In this small and erudite tome, Jaccottet draws us into the very heart of the artist’s calm and strangely haunting oeuvre. In his literary criticism, Jaccottet is known for deeply engaging with the work of his fellow poets and tenaciously seeking the essence of their poetics. In this, his only book-length essay devoted to an artist, his critical prose likewise blends empathy, subtle discernment, and a determination to pinpoint, or at least glimpse, the elusive underlying qualities of Morandi's deceptively simple, dull-toned yet mysteriously luminous paintings. The Pilgrim’s Bowl is a remarkably elucidating study based on a profound admiration for and a dialogue with Morandi’s oeuvre.

The Pilgrim's Bowl: (Giorgio Morandi) (The Swiss List)

Arts & Photography

After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Returning three years later, the disciple finds his master has abandoned his wife and child and moved into a squalid one-room flat, cutting himself off completely from his former life. Disillusioned and reeling from the discovery, the young man spends an entire night listening to his master’s bitter denunciation of the ideals they once shared.Obscurity, by noted thinker Philippe Jaccottet, is the story of this intense encounter between two men who were once very close and now must grapple with the fractured ideals that separate them. Written in 1960 during Jaccottet’s period of poetic paralysis, the novel seeks to harmonize the best and worst of human nature—reconciling despair, falsehood, and lethargy of spirit with the need to remain open to beauty, truth, and the essential goodness of humankind. Translated by Tess Lewis, Obscurity is Jaccottet’s only work of fiction, one that will introduce new readers to the multifaceted skills of this major poet.Praise for the French edition “In its haggard sobriety, the account of this tormented soul’s monologue is staggering . . . a beautiful narrative, written in a resounding, solemn style.”—La Table Ronde

Obscurity (The Swiss List)

Contemporary

Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of Switzerland’s most prominent and prolific men of letters, Jaccottet has published more than a dozen books of poetry and criticism.  One of Europe’s finest contemporary poets, Jaccottet is a writer of exacting attention. Through keen observations of the natural world, of art, literature, music, and reflections on the human condition, Jaccottet opens his readers’ eyes to the transcendent in everyday life. The Second Seedtime is a collection of “things seen, things read, and things dreamed.” The volume continues the project Jaccottet began three decades earlier in his first volume of notebooks, Seedtime. Here, again, he gathers flashes of beauty dispersed around him like seeds that may blossom into poems or moments of inspiration. He returns, insistently, to such literary touchstones as Dante, Montaigne, Góngora, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Michaux, Hopkins, Brontë, and Dickinson, as well as musical greats including Bach, Monteverdi, Purcell, and Schubert. The Second Seedtime is the vivid chronicle of one man’s passionate engagement with the life of the mind, the spirit, and the natural world.

The Second Seedtime: Notebooks, 1980–94 (The Swiss List)

Arts & Literature

In these times of heartbreaking violence, clashing religions, and a seemingly never-ending narrative of dichotomy between East and West, wonder at the religion and culture of the Middle East can be in short supply. However, the lyrical and philosophical travel writing in Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet’s Calm Fire rekindles it, lifting us out of our ordinary locales and stories of violent conflict in the Middle East. Jaccottet’s poetic descriptions explore the rich cultural worlds of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel, giving us uncommon glimpses into countries so often associated with turmoil, death and destruction. Expressing a poet’s admiration for the ecstasies of faith and a philosopher’s skepticism of these seemingly transformative feelings, Jaccottet dives deep into the religious cultures of the places he visits. Ultimately, whether in his native Swiss Alps or among the cedars of Lebanon, the same question pervades Philippe Jaccottet’s work: How should we live? More than a simple palliative to a depressing news cycle, Calm Fire captures a true sense of place by celebrating and pondering ways of life through the immersive experience of travel.

A Calm Fire: and Other Travel Writings (The Swiss List)

Travel

Africa

Philippe Jaccottet's newest work follows in some ways the approach of Seedtime, his recent two-volume collection of notebooks. Similarly comprising on-the-spot jottings, philosophical reflections, literary commentary, dream narratives and sundry "notes," this book nonetheless differs from the preceding volumes in that the Swiss poet includes more personal material than ever before. Drawing on unpublished notebooks from the years 1952-2005, Jacottet offers here passages about his family, the death of his father-in-law and of his mother, his encounters with other major poets--such as René Char, Francis Ponge, Jean Tardieu, and his friends Yves Bonnefoy and André du Bouchet--and his trips abroad, as well as, characteristically, his walks in the countryside around the village of Grignan, in the south of France, where he has lived since 1953. For a poet who has been notoriously discreet about his life, this book offers unexpected glimpses of the private man. Above all, the entries in this notebook show how one of the greatest European poets grapples with the discouraging elements of existence, counterbalancing them by recording fleeting perceptions in which "something else," almost like a threshold, seems present. &nbsp;

Patches of Sunlight, Or of Shadow: Safeguarded Notes, 1952–2005 (The Swiss List)

Philippe Jaccottet is one of a group of poets who turned away from the Surrealists’ sometimes abstruse experiments with form in favor of a muted lyrical expression born of a quasi-fraternal bonding with the wonder of earth, light, water, sky. This lyricism is steeped in an ambiguous sense of our planet’s vulnerability in this nuclear age. Jaccottet’s work has now developed steadily over nearly four decades as Derek Mahon points out in his introductory essay. In themes and form it will not seem alien to English language readers, yet Jaccottet’s voice is his own. The sensuous modulations of imagery, harmony, and mood are strangely moving and haunt the imagination.

Selected Poems | Philippe Jaccottet

Wake Forest University Press

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Books by Jaccottet, Philippe