From the Introduction by Stephen Romer

Some words of explanation are required at the start of this anthology, which gathers together seven French poets from three generations. The oldest, Jean Follain, was born in 1903, and the youngest, Gilles Ortlieb, in 1953. The original “hunch”, and it is one that has become a conviction over the years, is that Follain in fact stands at the head of a line of poets who have, to a greater or lesser extent, recognized themselves in his work. For one thing, the seven represented here have all at various moments expressed their admiration for the poet, either in written form, or (among the living) in conversation. Henri Thomas has written of Follain as one of the poets “qui parle d’autre chose”, rather than of himself. He admires him also as a poet extraordinarily free of rhetoric. Jacques Réda has remarked on Follain’s magical art of contiguity, his ability to set a current running between objects in juxtaposition, in the absence of any single governing metaphor – indeed there are scarcely any metaphors in his work. Guy Goffette has penned a typically witty poem, in the Follain style, and incorporating titles from the Norman poet’s collections, “Usage de Follain”. Seen in these terms, of loyalty, and even fealty, this cluster with seven sides, this septagon, is in fact self-suggesting. Obviously it is not exclusive, and each of these poets belongs also to other clusters, and has undergone other influences. But for our purpose, which is to present a definite lignée, or filiation, of poets, and to follow one significant and relatively untrodden path through the labyrinthine ways of French poetry in the last century, it is a useful point to start.


One hallmark of this grouping is the fierce independence of each of these poets, since they would only warily acknowledge that they belonged to anything resembling a school, still less a chapelle. They are all, in the nice French sense of that word, fairly sauvage, which does not mean that they are sociopaths, or that they cannot, on occasion, be perfectly urbane. But the sauvagerie is there in the work, which is solitary in feeling, whether alone in a room, or on a train, or on a Parisian street. Several of them quote approvingly Rimbaud’s celebrated On ne part pas (“no one ever leaves”) – quite cognizant of the fact they are frequently in movement. Apart from the notable exception of Henri Thomas, who is the author of several novels, these poets remain for the most part in disjunctive dialogue with themselves, and it is remarkable that even Follain himself, so scrupulously impersonal in his aesthetics, acknowledges that a poet lacks le don de l’ubiquité, the gift of being omnipresent. But a reading of Henri Thomas’s recently published Carnets shows clearly how this haunted and obsessive young man managed to distribute, among a whole cast of characters, his own compulsions. In Guy Goffette’s prose text “Partance”, the image of the poet writing in a dilapidated, immobilized caravan at the bottom of his own garden is a poignant résumé of a mental condition, of a self-consciousness that cannot escape itself. And as we shall see, it is in the effort to escape, and in what is for them almost a moral imperative to turn outwards, that these poets recognize each other. “Despair does not exist for a man who is walking”, writes Jacques Réda in Les Ruines de Paris, and it might serve as a motto for the others gathered here. But he adds the important qualifier, “as long as he really walks, and does not engage in chatter with someone else, or in self-pity, or in showing off”.

Contemporary French poetry has long been tagged as being overly cerebral and hermetic. But there exists a very different, thriving tradition which is too often muffled by noisier movements like Surrealism or Minimalism. Into the Deep Street gives voice to this tradition. What links the poets is an acute awareness of the existential instant in both its inward workings and also, crucially, in its outwardness – in the street, on the move.

From the key figure of Jean Follain, who can freeze an entire period of history in a vignette of a few lines, via the best-known of the close-knit if regionally scattered group, Philippe Jaccottet, to the newer voices of Guy Goffette and Gilles Ortlieb, all these poets are masters of wry brevity and the resonant image. These qualities are evoked both in the editors’ introductions and in their excellent translations.

The poets: Jean Follain, Henri Thomas, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Réda, Paul de Roux, Guy Goffette, Gilles Ortlieb